


A Star to Steer By

by Neotoma



Category: Supernatural
Genre: AU, Abortion, F/F, F/M, Het, Intersexuality, Kid Fic, M/M, Mathematicians, Mathematics, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Multi, Pregnancy, Sam & Gabriel Mini-Bang Challenge, Slash, Threesome, Werewolf AU, science saves the day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-26
Updated: 2011-10-26
Packaged: 2017-10-24 23:56:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 28,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/269340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neotoma/pseuds/Neotoma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam left home because he wanted to get an education -- but last year, his brother Dean found him and dragged him home. Now, Sam is trying to escape again, this time with the help of Jessica and their friend Gabriel. All they have on their side is skill, guile, and mathematics.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Star to Steer By

  
br  
[Art by Rubystandish and Viviantanner](http://rubystandish.livejournal.com/19474.html)

The first thing Sam hears when he gets home from his hunt is "You should have bred that bitch months ago," which makes his blood run cold and his fists fly out. He doesn't take that sort of shit from his father's hangers-on. He can't afford to, being the land-locked middle son.

So after proving he can still take anyone on successfully in human guise and on land, he dumps his kills in the kitchen for the women to deal with and ducks out to his house above the forge – the one advantage to having brought a blacksmith home is that he has a place of his own, with solid, reassuring walls to retreat to, back away from the bustle of the open longhouses and the palisade protecting the compound from the sea routes.

For all that his people have been kidnapping wives from other changing folk for generations, most people don't have Sam's instincts, don't find holes and dark places reassuring. Most of them want no walls and few barriers to swimming away from trouble. Sam has always wanted a home where he can dig himself in.

Sam drops to four feet once he's out of the circle of longhouses, and lopes up to the forge that spills out from the hill, and the home that is built into the rock above it. It's his place, and Jess' and even Gabriel's, though the blacksmith likes heights not all and had to construct a winding staircase before he could climb up to the rocky ledge that fronts their home. He's even worse with water, which Sam finds endearing but sad.

They're all trapped in his father's realm, but Sam and Jess could, given the opportunity of a boat, make their way off the island by themselves. Gabriel had been stowed in the ship like cargo, and hauled off like baggage, and been very sick between – getting off the island is not something he could accomplish without help.

So Sam is a little surprised at the scent that permeates his home – female in heat. Jess. She's cat-kind, they don't have yearly cycles, she told him that when they first met, when he was a lost foreigner in the fabulous dreaming spires of the university. Back when he thought he might build a life for himself away from his father and brothers and the sea that he knows and loves and is repelled by.

"Jess?" he breathes, and changes back from four feet to two.  
No one is on the ledge with its fine metal stove, or inside with the other stove, where they cook during the frequent island rain. Sam ventures further into his home, through the airy library – hard fought, to collect books when his father thought that was women's work – and Jess' workroom, and the playroom with its screen – Gabriel keeps his own customs, and Claire and Chazaiel aren't seen by adults if the blacksmith can help it, just like Sam's father keeps his women away from men who aren't of the family or the household – before coming to the bedchambers.

The door is closed, and when Sam tries to push it, it's barred.

"Go away, damnit!" Jess shrieks from the other side.

"Jess?" Sam asks.

"Sam? Oh god, Sam." Jess says, and then softer, "It's Sam, sweetheart. Can I let him in?"

There is a scraping, of something heavy moving, and then Jess is opening the door, just a crack, to peer out.

"Sam," she says, and her face is alight with relief.

"What's wrong? Are you–" Sam sniffs. It's not Jess. "Claire..?" he asks, voice strangling. Claire is _twelve_ , and still skinny and tiny and this has all the indications of a first heat being suffered through, against the wishes of the men in the household. But Claire is a part of Sam's sub-household, and they'd have to go through him to breed her.

Jess shakes her head. "Gabriel."

Sam stares at her. "Gabriel's _static_ ," Sam protests – he's never ever seen the blacksmith change, not once, and he's seen Claire and Chazaiel's alter forms even though the children are still shy with him, after almost a year of living in this house. Even Dean's seen the children's alter forms – seen them, and remarked on them, how odd they are. Claire's still gotten her bristly kitten coat and Chazaiel is brown-black and terribly goofy looking, with forelegs too long, hindlegs too short, and ears huge quarter-circles over his blunt little head.

"Gabriel's static and _male_ ," Sam reiterates.

Jess's mouth twists up in a rueful grimace. "I... look," she says, and steps away from the door.

The light is dim inside, which they both like in a den and bedchamber, and Sam looks around while letting his eyes adjust from the brightness of the other rooms of the house.

There's sheets and pillows piled up in one corner, opposite the bed. And there are furry bodies tucked up against each other, Chazaiel in his dark baby roly-polyness, and Claire with her leggy bristly spots, and something splotched brown and yellow and _massive_.

Gabriel's alter form is bigger than Sam's wolf shape. Bigger than Jess' cougar even. Sam isn't even sure what kind of creature Gabriel is, though it's immediately obvious that he's an adult version of Chazaiel, who Sam always thought of as a hideous, almost deformed, wild dog pup of some sort. But Gabriel levers himself to his feet, and Sam can see shoulders and neck muscles that bulge, and a heavy jaw like the rocker on a rocking chair, with long foreleg and shorter hindlegs that should look awkward and just look like they'd launch Gabriel right at Sam's throat if Sam tries anything stupid. The head is flat around the eyes, like a fighting dog's, with no place to catch with teeth.

Gabriel makes a hideous sound, almost like the laughter that bubbles out of him when he's nervous or upset in human form, and it's so him that Sam relaxes.

"Gabriel..." Sam says, and when Gabriel only makes the sound again.

Sam tilts his head, and then looks up in surprise as Jess closes the door and shoves the chest across it – which is where she must have had the chest before, blocking the door. She gives it one worried look, and then changes into the tawny cat that Sam loves.

She pads across the floor, and flicks her tail as she passes Gabriel, her tongue flicking out and down the slope of the other's splotchy back. She crawls into the piled pillows, picking up Chazaiel, who chirps in protest, and begins to lick him. Claire, all spindly legs, climbs into the nest Jess has made, and hides behind Sam's beloved, as if Sam was something to hide from.

Sam backs up a step, and changes himself. The smell of heat is overwhelming.

"You're _female!_ " Sam yelps, nose to nose with Gabriel now that they're both in alter form, except that Gabriel is definitely bigger than him like this, which is throwing him off balance. "How are you female?! I've seen you naked! Many times!" They've gone to the beach for clams and oysters, all five of them – and while Gabriel and Chazaiel don't do more than wade, no one wears clothes for swimming – they would only be ruined by the salt water. And Gabriel has a penis and balls. Hell, Sam glances to confirm, Gabriel has a penis and balls _now_ , even though the other smells overwhelmingly of being in heat.

"You're an idiot," Gabriel grows, and his - her? – voice isn't any different, still resonant and deeply masculine. "And I'm male. As long as I'm trapped here, I'm _male_. Understand?"

"No?" Sam tucks his tail under his legs at the tone, and cringes. Gabriel is bigger than him, and apparently female but not and this is very confusing.

 

Sam's curled down on himself and all but giggling from nerves, which suits Gabriel fine. He crowds the dark-furred wolf back against the door, using his sheer size to intimidate.

"Gabriel..." Jess warns.

Gabriel flicks his ears back, and gives a concilatory chuckle. "I promise not to hurt him, Jess," he says, before shifting to human shape, and shoving the chest out of the way with his foot on its side. It takes but a moment to grab Sam by the ruff of his neck and drag him through the door and into the children's playroom on the other side.

Sam stumbles away from him and transforms.

"Gabriel, what the hell?!" the man yells, turning to glare at Gabriel.

Gabriel responds by closing the distance and burying his hands in Sam's dark hair, pulling him down for a kiss. It's not long, just a tease of lips and tongue, but Sam doesn't fight it after the first startled moment.

"Oh," Sam says.

Gabriel lays his forehead against Sam's shoulder and growls out in rueful amusement. This is not at all what he would have chosen, if he had any options at all. His body has betrayed him, and this is the best choice he can make under the fog of heat and desperation.

Sam is nosing into his hair, not just affection, but curiosity as well. He can tell by the way Sam pauses, perhaps trying to think even though each sniff has to be pulling him into the warm fog of heat-scent.

"You're really in heat..." Sam murmurs.

"Yes, Sam, I know," Gabriel sighs.

Sam pulls back to look down at him, his eyes soft. "It's just... what are you, Gabriel? I thought you were _static_."

"I wanted you to think that," Gabriel admits.

Sam just looks back at him, waiting.

Gabriel huffs out a breath. "Hyena. I'm a hyena, from the Free Cities."

"Hensa of the Inland Sea..?" Sam murmurs, naming the great city, parent of empire, home of scholars and kings.

Gabriel snort, and nuzzles into the hand Sam brings up to trace his over his cheek. "No, Bar-dushept. It's smaller, upriver, and further east."

"What were you doing in Oxencross Town then...?" Sam asks.

Gabriel rolls his eyes. "Making instruments."

"But you could have stayed home and done that! Why come to an upstart city with a jumped-up university—"

"Because I wanted to!" Gabriel cuts him off. He lifts his chin to stare Sam straight in the face, braces his feet on the ground, and shoves Sam back on the playroom mattress. "And now, I want this!"

"Gabriel!" Sam yelps as he crashes onto his hind end. "That's the heat talking!"

"Oh?" Gabriel snaps, as he drops down to pin Sam in place, even as Sam tries to wriggle away. "I hadn't noticed!"

Sam freezes his squirming, stops trying to wriggle out from under Gabriel—which feels quite delicious right at the moment—and asks, "Really?"

Gabriel rolls his eyes, and unbuckle the belt that keeps Sam's trousers up.

"...right..." Sam mutters.

Gabriel strips Sam of belt and shirt and trousers, until he's just long and naked.

"You ever do this before?" Gabriel asks, as he pulls his own shirt over his head even as he straddles Sam's thighs, keeping the wolf-skin down with his body's weight.

"I've had sex before!" Sam barks, outrage in every word.

Gabriel smiles, and growls out his amusement before he clarifies. "With someone in heat?"

"Yeah," Sam mutters, looking away.

Gabriel cocks his head. That's kind of an odd response—not confident or embarassed, but not like regretful.

"It was... Dean got this girl for me..." Sam sputters, "I don't want to talk about it."

With the mention of Sam's older brother Dean, Gabriel thinks he has the shape of it, and it is an ugly shape. If he weren't in heat, or had any other option than Sam that he could trust with his secret, than Sam's admission might be a real stumbling block to his going forward. But he is in heat, and there is no one else to trust but Sam and Jess.

"All right," Gabriel says, and reaches down to unwind his kilt, "this is going to be a little different from that."

Sam makes a face.

"What?" Gabriel snaps.

"You smell like you're in heat—but you still have a penis..." Sam wrinkles his nose.

"Shows you what _you_ know," Gabriel snaps.

"I can recognize a dick when I see one!"

"I'm a hyena, Sam. We all have one, even those of us who give birth."

Sam blinks, and then looks down, curiosity overcoming him, just like Gabriel knew it would. Well, curiosity and the scent of heat.

"Do you have ... female parts too?" Sam asks, and his hands flutter over Gabriel's thighs, like he wants to go exploring.

Gabriel rolls his eyes, grabs Sam's hands, and pushes Sam flat on his back by his wrists. "I'll show you what I have, Sam. Don't worry."

Sam's look slowly changes from suspicious curiosity to honest amusement, and Gabriel smiles at that.

"Good," Sam says. "I'm always up for learning new things."

Gabriel rolls his eyes in amusement, and then rolls his hips against Sam's, because he's noticed just how 'up' Sam is.

"I can tell—that's not all that you're up for, either."

After that, Sam is fairly biddable, and Gabriel finds him a good partner in easing the itchy, twitchy burn of heat. It's a whole slew of desperate choices among poor options, but Gabriel will make the most of what he's got, and what he's got is Sam willing and hard under him.

 

Jess wakes up sometime in the night – she's a cat, she's fine with the night – and shifts Claire and Chazaiel off where they're using her for a pillow. Chaz has his little nose pressed right along her flank, as if he could nurse off her. The pathetic nature of that little gesture in the cub makes Jess lick the toddler's head before she nudges him against his cousin and steps out of the nest of blankets.

Free of the children, she changes to human shape, and unblocks the door carefully, trying not to scrape the chest against the floor and wake them as she leaves the bedchamber to look in on Sam and Gabriel in the playroom where they've retreated. She'd been panicked when she'd retreated here, she and Gabriel both, too intimidated by the behavior of Sam's family as they reacted to the heat that they'd thought _Jess_ was going into.

Of course, she's been hiding in the bedchamber with Gabriel for three days now... she might be going into heat herself just from the proximity. Her cat nature is a curse sometimes – she hasn't a fixed season, like a fox or wolf or a seal.

Gabriel is smaller in human shape, and not nearly as handsome as Sam. But he has a wonderful back, from his shoulders to his buttocks, from swinging his smith's hammer – and Jess has known this for years, because Gabriel only covers up out of the forge, and inside of it usually only wears a kilt or less – and his prick... well, it's not as long or as thick as Sam's, but it's close and quite out of proportion to his size.

Or his gender. Jess knows in her head that Gabriel is _hyena_ and thus female, but even with the smell of heat all around, she can't think of him as anything other than male. And it's not like the hyena distinguish between male and female, from what little she knows about them.

"Jess?" Gabriel asks softly, and turns his head, just enough to catch her eyes.

"Hey... you alright?" she replies, coming over, and sitting on the edge of their nest. She talks softly, because Sam looks exhausted and Gabriel not much better and if they need to sleep, she doesn't want to disturb them.

"Haven't done that in a long time..." Gabriel admits, and turns over so that he can look at her. His shifting puts him more firmly against Sam, and Jess doesn't know if that's a claiming gesture or an accident. She doesn't want it to be a claim, because she doesn't want to fight over Sam. They might have to live among the selkies, but fighting over a man like the seal-women do would just be stupid.

"You and Kali..."

Gabriel chuckles, a soft warm sound. "Not the same. That was going in, not letting someone else in." He wraps his hand around his prick, and gives it a careful shake. "I'm sore..."

Jess glances down at his prick; it looks just like a prick, like an organ any man might have. She bites her lip, and then blurts, "How does that even work...?"

"Scrunched up like a shirt-sleeve," Sam mutters behind them, and his arm comes around Gabriel's waist. "It was unbelievably weird."

Gabriel laughs again. "Which is why we did it twice."

"Hmmm," Sam says, and noses into Gabriel's hair. "You're in heat... makes you hard to resist."

Jess leans down, and licks Gabriel's cheek, which he presses into. "Mmmm, you do smell delicious."

"Oh, god, don't do that," Sam mutters. "I couldn't get it up again if my life depended on it."

And then Sam yelps, because Gabriel flops his hand backwards to give Sam a quick grope. "Huh. I guess you're right. Men these days...no stamina."

Jess laughs, and leans over Sam for a quick feel-up of her own, which has Sam yipping a protest. "No, no stamina at all."

She flops down besides Gabriel, and puts her own arm on his waist, just besides Sam, with her hand stroking over Gabriel's back.

"So, what are you going to do?"

Gabriel cracks his eyes open, and gives her a considering look.

"That won't help," she says.

"It will for a little while," Gabriel replies. "Release is release, whether or not I can get pregnant from it. And it will give Sam more time to _recover_."

Sam gives Gabriel an outraged look, which Gabriel misses because he's facing Jess.

Jess smiles at Sam, and then darts forward to give Gabriel a quick peck on the lips, not a tease, she doesn't think, but a kiss of reassurance.

Gabriel has other ideas though, and his hands come up, one sneaking around her waist to pull her flush against him, and one up to cradle the back of her head to bring her in for a deeper, more intense kiss.

Jess is left breathless, and flushed. She squirms under Gabriel's regard after he lets her go, and then frowns when she notices Sam's open-mouthed shock over Gabriel's shoulder.

She sniffs at Sam, and leans in to kiss Gabriel again, this time leaning in hard, pushing Gabriel back against Sam's chest as she nips and tongues his mouth.

Gabriel ducks his head and smiles when she finally releases him, and when she glances at Sam, he gulps heavily against his own flush.

"Like that?" she challenges.

"Oh, yes," Gabriel rumbles, and Sam squeaks an echo. Gabriel blinks, and then turns to looks over his shoulder at Sam.

"What? Jess is hot," Sam says, and when Gabriel gives him a raised eyebrow, babbles, "And you're... in heat."

Jess just laughs at Gabriel's disgruntled look, pressing her face against his broad chest as she tries to muffle her giggles. Maybe Gabriel is pretty the way hyena figure things. She's never asked, mainly because she'd thought Gabriel was static, just like Sam did that he was just hiding his nature – well, she can't blame him. If she could hide in plain sight among the selkies, she would too. As it is, she tries to attract no attention from them; it's bad enough that they barely consider her Sam's. She knows Sam is in a precarious position as it is. He might be the son of the chieftain, but he's not a seal, and it's only by his father's position and his brothers' that he has as much status as he does.

Of course, if he were a selkie, he'd already be married twice over, and Jess if she were lucky would be his starter-wife – with little status until she gave birth to a seal or a son. She might be dependent on Sam's status now, but with them both being non-selkie, they're on a more even footing – at least, she thinks they are.

"Such eloquence," Gabriel says.

"Oh hush, you," Jess says, and cups her hands around his jaw, doing a little bit of forceful kissing herself. Gabriel just _melts_ against her, making soft little sounds, and squirming, hips and flailing hands and feet tangling against her legs.

"Oh..." Jess says as she draws back. Gabriel's eyes are huge, and he's panting, almost whining for her. She rubs her hand down his back, soothing along his spine, nudging Sam's arm out of the way as she slides her fingers over Gabriel's muscular ass and pulls him towards her.

"How... how can we do this?" she asks, even as she throws a leg over Gabriel's flank and twists her hips. She can feel herself gaping open, hungry, even as she feels Gabriel's prick rising against her thigh.

Gabriel himself looks, not pained, but like he's concentrating inwardly, a fierce distant look that doesn't touch her at all. Not until he opens his eyes again and growls, "Like this."

Jess finds herself clutched and pulled down, as Gabriel rolls back so he's leaning back on Sam, who is squawking at being used as a bolster. Jess herself squeaks as she's moved – Gabriel might be smaller, but he's _strong_ – and her open hungry cunt is brushed by Gabriel's prick.

She yelps at that sensation, and bears down, pulling him into her body, engulfing him as she thrusts her hips forward, pushing Gabriel back even as she braces her hands on his shoulders.

From then, it's her grinding her hips as she rides Gabriel and kissing him fiercely, almost biting, as he moves under her. His prick warm and hard, fitting her quite nicely as he shivers and bucks against her. His hands stroke her flank, up her breasts, and over her ass where she really likes how he spreads her open to press at her from behind with his clever craftsman's hands.

Her release sneaks up on her faster than she hits against Gabriel's pelvis at just the _right_ point. Her teeth sink into his shoulder, and she yowls in his ear as she shudders against him.

She's panting and trying to unlock her jaws a minute later, slightly embarrassed that she bit him.

"That was... amazing," Sam breaths underneath them, which makes Jess bolt upright, and try to scramble off Gabriel.

"Hey!" Gabriel protests, and grabs her hips, keeping her from slipping off. In fact, he pulls her back down around him, in a motion that makes Jess shudder and moan and press her head against his neck, hiding from him and Sam both.

"Sorry, I shouldn't –"

"You'll let me finish?" Gabriel asks, and licks her from cheek to ear.

She looks up at him in surprise, and wiggles her hips. Yes, he's still hard and inside her.

"Thought you were sore," she mutters. She soon will be, since she went at him like she was in heat herself.

"I feel _fine_ right now."

"I think my legs are going to cramp..." she mumbles. Her knees definitely feel overworked, and her hips, like she's been dancing for hours.

"Then don't use them," Gabriel laughs, and flips them bodily, easily, turning them on the bed until Jess is lying on her back and Gabriel is kneeling between her thighs. From this angle, he's pressing up inside her, in a place that makes him feel much bigger than she's used to.

She whimpers, but grabs his hand as he draws back. It's a good feeling, being so filled; she doesn't want him to go.

Gabriel smirks at her, and picks up her hand, kissing it gently and placing it up on the nape of his neck. Then he grabs her other hand, kisses it, and puts it in Sam's hand. She turns her head to look at Sam, who is smiling tremulously.

"You are so beautiful," he murmurs.

Jess laughs, and reaches up to pat Sam's cheek, but that's when Gabriel thrusts, huge and fast and as hard as his own hammer. Jess gasps, surprised at how good he feels, pushing into her and pulling away, over and over. She looks down, and watches as her body swallows Gabriel's prick and tosses it back up, a hungry deliberate sucking that has the smith grunting as his back arches and his shoulders flex.

"Ah ah ah," Gabriel yelps, and then shudders, a full body roll that drives Jess into toe-curling mewls for the second time this night.

Gabriel flops on his belly beside her a moment later, covered with sweat but licking his chops in a way that is pure satisfaction.

"That," Sam says, "was glorious."

Jess looks at Sam incredulously, and laughs. "Well, look at you. Late, but finally ready."

Gabriel lifts his head to peer over Jess's body, and does a full body sigh. "Oh, finally. I'll get up in a minute, Sam..."

"No," Sam says, "don't move," and crawls carefully over Jess.

Gabriel makes a confused noise, and then squawks a protest when Sam sits on his far side and runs a hand down his back and between his legs.

"Sam!"

"This'll be good, Gabriel," Sam says, even as he's tugging Gabriel upright, and then back into Sam's lap, spreading his knees wide over Sam's thighs. Jess watches in interest as Sam kisses the back of Gabriel's neck, and runs his hands over Gabriel's groin, cupping at his sac and then stroking up his prick.

Jess has never seen anything like it, watching as Sam manipulates Gabriel's prick, holding the shaft with one hand while circling the head with his other, and then _tugging_. Especially not when Gabriel groans and his prick just... folds open around the first of Sam's fingers.

Sam grins at her over Gabriel's shoulder, kisses the other's dropped head, and begins to dip his finger in and out of Gabriel's prick even as his other hand holds the shaft steady. Gabriel keeps making incoherent grunts, and when he raises his head to press back against Sam's shoulder, Jess can see his eyes are almost rolled back.

"Sam..." Jess says, concerned.

"He likes it," Sam says.

"Gabriel..?" she asks.

Gabriel stares at her, one slow blink, then two, even as Sam keeps manipulating his prick in ways that should be _painful_. Then Gabriel grabs at her hand, and tugs.

With effort, Jess sits up, leaning close to Gabriel. She's worried, because he's not talking and he's groaning little breathy sounds.

But he looks at her a long second, and his hands come up to her shoulders, and then bury themselves in her hair, and he's kissing her again, and it's good and warm and so sweet. Jess draws back and presses her forehead against Gabriel, just breathing with him in bliss.

And then Gabriel collapses in her lap with a sharp bark, chest and arms and head hitting the blankets and legs and ass being pulled back against Sam.

Jess starts, and then stares at Sam, who is smirking again and has a hand tight on Gabriel's hip as he pulls Gabriel against him.

"Oh, that's good," Sam croons, in a tone that Jess knows very well. Sam makes that sound when she's all around him, and apparently he makes it for Gabriel as well.

"Yeah," Gabriel mumbles, and his arms are draped haphazardly over Jess's knees, like he can't remember how to work them.

"Gabriel?" Jess asks, and gets a blissed out smile as Gabriel lifts fogged eyes to her and yawns, showing pink tongue and strong teeth.

"Hmmm, Jess?"

"You feeling left out, Jess?" Sam murmurs, and slaps Gabriel's ass gently. "She's feeling left out, Gabriel."

"Can't have that," Gabriel mumbles, and gets his arms under him, bracing himself up Jess's body until he's shakily on all fours, arms on her shoulders and legs opened wide and awkward around Sam's. He nuzzles her neck clumsily, and Jess wraps her arms around him to hold him up.

She looks down the length of him, his sharp chin and broad shoulders and the muscled expanse of his chest and belly, to his groin, where his prick should be. And it is there, but it's ... it's the most bizarre thing she's ever seen.

Sam was right, it does scrunch up like a sleeve pushed over someone's elbow. Gabriel's prick is pushed back between his legs and _folded_ around Sam's prick, which looks all together too huge as Sam thrusts forward and back shallowly. The way the skin stretches tight around Sam's girth even as it bunches up in length, that looks painful to Jess.

"Gabriel, are you ... all right?" Jess asks. He's smaller than she is and even she has trouble with Sam's prick sometimes, especially from that angle...

"'M wonderful," Gabriel mutters and drapes himself forward again to lick against her neck. "'M _deep_ , if you're worrying."

"Okay..." she murmurs, and kisses the top of his head as he continues to nuzzle and grumble against her. It takes her a moment to realize that his growling is a happy sound, just like his laughter is usually nerves – hyena don't make any normal sense, apparently.

It's over a few moments later, as Sam barks his release, and then pulls Gabriel backwards away from him, even as Sam pinches him between his legs. This causes Gabriel to yelp and chatter, and then roll his entire body just like before, when he was in Jess.

Jess watches in fascination, as Gabriel and Sam flop over on their sides together. Gabriel is almost boneless – glazed-eyed with not quite sleep – and Sam looks exhausted, but he carefully puts his hand down between them, and sort of holds Gabriel's prick steady as he slides out. No wonder Gabriel said he was sore, if they'd done this twice before – it must have been heat-lust that allowed Gabriel to do what he'd done with Jess, because the pain should have stopped him.

Sam looks up at her as she's watching him sort of pet Gabriel's prick back into shape, though it looks stretched out and distorted. His face is sheepish.

"He said...it's delicate, he said. Tears easily," Sam murmurs.

"I didn't say anything," Jess says, but she puts her hand on Gabriel's prick herself, and pets it. It feels disturbing, like there is no structure to it, and she lets go quickly. Gabriel makes a grumbling sound, and shifts between them, his nose buried against Jess's folded legs and his back pressed against Sam's body.

"Hey," Sam murmurs, and puts his arm around Gabriel's waist. Jess smiles down at them for a second, then leans over to kiss Sam before she lies down on Gabriel's other side and puts her own arm around him. She's not worried about fighting over Sam anymore – she can claim Gabriel as well as Sam, she decides, and goes to sleep.

 

Gabriel is brewing pennyroyal and blue cohosh when Sam comes out onto the ledge. Gabriel can tell the moment Sam realizes what the mingled scents are for, because his gentle, friendly smile falls right off his face and he turns stony.

But when he reaches to pull the brew pot off the stove, Gabriel chatters his teeth and snaps, "Don't!"

"Are you serious?" Sam hisses.

Gabriel just glares at Sam as he bats the man's hands away. "I know what I'm doing."

Sam just stares at him, somewhere between shock and outrage, as if he had caught Gabriel boiling infants alive.

"You bastard," Sam finally says.

"What?" Gabriel snaps. "What did you expect me to do? Keep it?"

"You're going to kill our baby–"

"Yes," Gabriel snaps, "I'm aborting. Deal with it."

Sam gets even paler, and looks sick. "Why?"

"Are you seriously asking why?!" Gabriel says. Sam cannot possibly be that naive. He grew up on this horrible island, he must know how terrible things are.

"Is it me? The fact that I'm a wolf?"

Gabriel rolls his eyes. "Yes, Sam, the fact that we don't share an alter-form is so totally disgusting that I'd prefer to risk my life rather than–"

"Then why?"

Gabriel just stares at Sam for a moment. When stubbornly Sam continues to look hurt, Gabriel speaks slowly, "Because I can't be found out – my safety here is based on being a valuable _male_ blacksmith."

"But–"

"Tell me, Sam, what would have happened if you tried to take two fertile concubines when they were dividing us up after the raid?"

"I'd have gotten my nose bitten...oh."

"Right. And what would have happened to the women, in that scenario?"

"Dean would have awarded the second one to a worthy member of his crew. Maybe the first one too, to teach me not to overreach myself."

Gabriel shudders at the thought. He is never letting the selkies know he's hyena – there are enough ridiculous legends about his kind, and he doesn't want to end up dying in pieces from ignorant fools trying to use him as material for hexbags. And he's definitely not letting them know he's Chazaiel's parent – Chaz's _mother_ as selkies reckon things – he wouldn't survive the rapes slave women are victims of, in all likelihood. Sex is difficult enough for his kind, with their fragile, ridiculously complicated genitalia – it's tricky enough when aroused and with a willing and careful partner – a rapist would likely tear him until he bled to death, from ignorance and unconcern. It's something he tries not to think about because the fear is paralyzing. Better to hide in plain sight, behind the shield of assumptions that most people make.

"I wouldn't survive that," is all he says to Sam.

Sam looks stricken... "Gabriel," he says, and skims a hand down, not quite touching Gabriel's arm. Gabriel sighs, and leans into Sam's open palm, and presses his head against Sam's chest.

"I have to live, Sam. Claire and Chazaiel need me."

"And so this child has to die?"

"Yes," Gabriel says. "Better now than later. I'll be ill for a few days –" he is brewing poison, after all; he'll come out of it alive, but it will be a few awful days, "– but you can tell anyone who asks what happened that you beat me into submission when Jess went into heat."

"Jess didn't go into heat."

"Say that she did. It'll explain the scent."

"She's not pregnant."

Gabriel shrugs. "She didn't settle. Not everyone does every heat. It's common enough."

Sam frowns. "It'll be dangerous for her. She doesn't need to be labeled barren..."

Gabriel pokes Sam in the chest, "Then get us off this thrice-damned island before it becomes an issue!"

Sam looks taken-aback. As if he hadn't realized how much Gabriel hates it here, with selkies everywhere and danger in every breath. It's a land run to benefit only the people – males – at the very top of the clan, with everyone else scrambling for patronage and protection, and Gabriel wants to bite it all down.

For now, though, he needs to lay low, pretend to be meek and cowed, a humble little static with no alter-form who is grateful for Sam's protection and Dean's patronage and the opportunity to smith for people who dragged him onto their ships and threatened his cub and his kin. He has to pretend to be other than what he is, and he can't let anything disrupt that illusion, not even if he hurts Sam by aborting the possibility of a child made between the two of them.

He'll make this sacrifice, and as many more like it as he has to, until Sam can get them all off this damned island, or they die trying.

 

The day Gabriel drinks the first dose of abortifacient, Sam spends doing his normal household tasks. When Gabriel takes to bed, sweating and chuckling desperately – Sam's figured out that Gabriel's laughter is generally a sign of distress, not happiness – Sam looks in on him.

The smith is ashen pale all over his body but also splotchy, a strange combination of deathly white and dangerously red, as he curls on the bed in the children's playroom. He trembles and shakes, and when Sam draws a blanket over his shoulders he makes a unhappy sound, halfway between a giggle and a sob.

"Hey," Sam says as he crouches at the bedside.

Gabriel opens one amber eye just long enough to stare at Sam, before burying his face in the cotton tick mattress.

"You look awful," Sam murmurs. "I should have Kate look at you..."

"Are you mad?" Gabriel growls. "Your father's wife is an herbwife. She'd know what was happening immediately."

"Yeah, that's kind of the point. Otherwise she wouldn't be able to–" 'help', Sam is about to say, but then his brain catches up to his mouth. Gabriel doesn't want anyone to know about him, and bringing Kate to examine Gabriel would mean she would _examine_ Gabriel and his deception would almost certainly be found out. And while Kate was always a dutiful stepmother to Sam when he was small, she doesn't bear him love, or even much affection. She wouldn't lie for him. He's not a seal, and that's always going to be a sticking point for her.

"– Okay, right. Will willowbark help? I can brew that, or some chamomile..."

"No," Gabriel groans. "No, nothing. This is dangerous enough, Sam. I can't take anything else."

So Sam strokes his hand through Gabriel's hair until he quiets, falling into a stupor if not into sleep.

Then Sam goes and spends the afternoon helping crack firewood and other necessary tasks around the compound that require effort and attention. He doesn't return to the home above the forge until just an hour or so before nightfall.

Jess has seabirds stewing on the outside oven, and a mess of steamed cress cooling on the sill; there's butter and dried fish to spread it on as well, so it's a full meal tonight. They dish out the greens and stew between them, and let Claire feed her little cousin, as Chaz is whining tonight, looking for his parent every few moments before Claire distracts the baby with food.

Sam devours his meal, and then leaves to check on Gabriel, letting Jess and Claire to clean up. The smith is where Sam left him, though he's kicked off the blankets and is lying naked on the bed.

Gabriel's color is back to normal, his flesh all peach and pale, instead of livid. Sam drinks in the sight for a moment, and then sniffs the air in concern. It smells like sweat and vomit in the playroom, and Sam wrinkles his nose. He steps close to Gabriel, and the rancorous scent is stronger.

"Damn," Sam whispers. He leans down and lays the back of his hand against Gabriel's neck. The smith feels damp, almost clammy, even though he doesn't look that bad to the eye. Sam frowns, and moves his hand, testing Gabriel's skin for sweat, for hot spots and tender areas, and becomes very worried when he reaches the small of Gabriel's back, and the heat over his kidneys.

"I'm not at my best," Gabriel says suddenly, his voice dragging with exhaustion, "if it's sex you're interested in."

"Crap, no!" Sam yelps, and then frowns at the sly look in Gabriel's half-awake eyes. "No, that's jus..."

Gabriel shrugs tiredly. "I've heard some of your father's men talk, you know. We've had sex already – you'd be well within your rights as man of this home to demand it again."

"When you're ill to the point of vomiting?" Sam says, avoiding the reason why Gabriel is so ill. Does Gabriel think he's so inconsiderate? If nothing else, Sam thought Gabriel knew him better.

"I drank poison willingly," Gabriel shrugs again. "Some would say since it is my own fault that I am so unwell, that is no reason for you not to get what you want."

"Gabriel!" Sam says, and then realizes, "You're testing me... This is a test..."

Gabriel gives a sly, sideways look. "I had to be certain."

Sam rolls his eyes, and leans down to look Gabriel in the eye. "I wouldn't mind having sex with you again... but I'm not going to demand it. I thought you knew me better."

Gabriel is quiet for a long moment, and Sam thinks he might have fallen back into a tired doze. But Gabriel mutters, "I have to be sure."

Sam pets Gabriel's soft, brown hair gently, and grimaces at the tacky sweat of it. "That I wouldn't...?"

"Tell. Betray me."

Sam stops with his hand resting on the back of Gabriel's head. "If you didn't trust me, then why did you come to me with your heat? We hadn't had sex – and believe me, Dean was sure I was fucking you _and_ Jess – before you forced it. Why risk that? Why not do whatever you did in Oxencross Town, because in the three years I knew you there, you didn't go into heat once."

Gabriel tilts his head back, to give Sam a sleepy blink, and then a weak whoop of amusement.

"What?" Sam asks. What did he say that was funny?

"Chazaiel is almost two."

"So? – oh..." Chazaiel is almost _two_. Sam's known Gabriel for four, almost five years now. As far as he remembers, Chazaiel just appeared one day, a bundle in a basket that Gabriel had mostly kept behind a screen at his forge back in Oxencross Town. He'd kind of assumed that Gabriel had gotten some woman of the town pregnant and she'd dropped the infant on him rather than raise Chaz herself. "How... I mean, I didn't notice... I mean..."

"My kind, we don't show much. Especially with singletons, like Chazaiel."

"Who is," Sam pauses. Gabriel always called himself Chazaiel's parent, "other parent?"

"Mahalaleel. You probably don't remember him."

Sam thinks – there were several people who stayed with Gabriel over the years, friends and relations of his from the hot lands in the north. Most prominently was that tiny woman whose alter-form was a tiger; Sam had frankly been scared of Kali, but Gabriel had been delighted with her company, and more than a little besotted. That was when Sam had decided Gabriel had all the sense when it came to lovers as a dead sheep. The name 'Mahalaleel' doesn't bring up anything more than an impression of blond hair and dissipation.

"Blond hair, attitude?"

Gabriel whoops softly in startled amusement for a moment, "Oh, no. God above, that's Balthazar. I wouldn't fuck him with a stolen dick. But Mahalaleel was traveling with Balthazar and his twin Baaltamar."

Sam remembers now. Balthazar was the blond and dissipated one, Baaltamar was blond and bubbly, and Mahalaleel had been refreshingly reserved and somber, which didn't seem like Gabriel's type at all. He'd spent most of his time with Kali, who had been a lawyer from the school, and the rest of it with an assortment of the wilder sort that came to the university – bright, ferocious women almost to the last.

 

Jess drills Claire through arithmetic exercises as she cleans up the remains of the meal. The bits of seabird and cress left she folds into one of the loaves she's been letting rise all afternoon, and sets the bread in the oven to cook overnight. In the morning, there will be one stuffed loaf and one plain for them all to share.

That her life is this, wearying rounds of cooking and sewing and the hard physical work of running a house with only the help of a girl – Sam is routinely dragged off on other tasks by his brother, and Gabriel is all but tied to the forge most days (and she's quite sure that Sam's father would have literally done it if Sam hadn't stepped in) – sometimes makes her want to scream, but she never has any energy for that anymore.

The sun is sinking beyond the sea, and Chazaiel leaning heavily against the table as he idly cuddles his raggedy mouse doll when Jess finally says, "That's enough for tonight, Claire."

The girl sighs, and sets aside her wax tablet. She's coming along – Jess would almost trust her to keep books, at least simple ones – and Jess likes teaching the girl. It's one of the few things she's been able to keep from before – teaching the flow of numbers.

"Come on, Chaz," Claire says, and picks her cousin up. The toddler rouses enough to whine and squirm, but it's a token protest at best. Jess follows them to the door of the playroom and peeks in. Sam is sitting by the cot, his hand on Gabriel's head, stroking through sweat dampened hair – sweat-dampened everything, in truth. Even the blanket that is drawn over Gabriel's body is dark with sweat.

"... Go into the bedchamber, Claire. You'll be sleeping with us tonight."

Claire looks up at Jess dubiously. "Uncle is really sick, isn't he? His heat went bad – will that happen to me too?" She cuddles her cousin, who grumbles sleepily at being manhandled.

"You're too young to go into heat," Jess says automatically. She's avoiding the topic of why Gabriel's 'heat went bad', and if that's cowardice, so be it. Claire might have been terrified out her mind during the raid – which Jess doesn't blame her for, because Jess was too – but she's made friends on the island. She's adapting, and maybe if all their effort comes to naught, Claire will still be able to thrive and prosper.

"Are you sure?" Claire asks.

Jess is confident of that, at least. "Yes. You've got two years at least, maybe more."

Claire seems to accept that, and goes past Jess into the bedroom.

Jess sighs and frowns, and then goes into the playroom.

"Hey," Sam says.

"Hey," Jess replies, and crouches beside him, looking down at Gabriel, who is shivering slightly, even though the blanket covers him. "He looks awful."

"I feel awful, too," Gabriel mutters, not opening his eyes, not turning his head.

"Hey, you..." Jess says softly, and runs her own fingers through Gabriel's hair until he opens his eyes. "Yeah, you look like warmed-over shit."

Gabriel rolls his eyes pointedly, before closing them.

Jess watches as Sam sighs, and frowns at Gabriel. "I should go take observations..." he says before he disappears out the door. Jess hears him climbing to the roof and the framed sextant that sit there.

Gabriel makes an unhappy sound even as Jess pets his hair and wonders if throwing water over him would make a difference, or if she would just have to do it again in the morning.

"Please tell me that the tables are coming along?" Gabriel asks in a hoarse voice, finally turning enough to open his eyes and look at Jess.

"Yeah, they are," Jess says. "Don't worry about them. What do you need? Water? Something to eat?"

"Holy Parent, not food," Gabriel groans. "Water?"

Jess nods, and gets the ewer and basin from the low table. There's water there, and when she brings them over, Gabriel lets her pour some onto him through the sheet after he drinks a few mouthfuls. It seems to help, because Gabriel makes a series of impossible scandalous noises.

"Anything else?"

Gabriel blinks up at her, and deflates with a sigh. "Another dose."

"Is that safe?" Jess doesn't like the side-effects. Gabriel radiates heat, though he's not all blotchy like this morning.

"Of course not," Gabriel says. "I'm only drinking poison."

Jess frowns. "There's got to be a safer method, Gabriel."

"Silphium, but I can't get it now."

Jess stares at Gabriel, who stares back with her with a calm lizard-like mien. "How do you know that? Have you done this before?"

"My people don't leave home without knowing how to take care of ourselves," Gabriel murmurs. "And yes, I have."

Jess feels repulsed, and it must show on her face, because Gabriel laughs. It's the bleak hollow sound that gets to her, breaks through her disgust.

"What happened? I mean, _why_?" Jess asks. Why risk himself and destroy a child, or at least the possibility of one?

"I was fourteen," Gabriel says softly. "My first heat, and things got out of hand. My parent and uncles, they would have managed it for me, but well... it was a clusterfuck," he makes another soft, unhappy giggle. "I wasn't old enough to be pregnant, so my parent made sure I wasn't."

Jess is still appalled. "You were fourteen and you went through this?"

"Ha, no. Silphium is a lot gentler and safer. That's why it's worth its weight in silver." Gabriel shivers again, and rolls over. "It's all right, Jess. I managed my heats better after that."

"Until you came to Oxencross Town."

Gabriel gives her a quizzical look through his sweaty hair.

"Chazaiel wasn't planned, was he?"

"Actually, he was, kind of," Gabriel admits.

Jess tilts her head in inquiry.

"All those 'friends' passing through. Kin of mine, but not too close, if you know what I mean? I'd gotten permission–"

"Permission?" Jess squeaks.

"– to settle outside the homelands. Got the training, went through a pregnancy, chose a route and went to set up my waystation."

"What?" Jess is totally confused. "Training? Waystation? What are you talking about?"

"Had to get trained – for my own safety, of course – because the outlands are full of dangers. And a waystation is like a house, except everyone is welcome in the outer gard, even people from rival clans, you know...?"

"No, not really," Jess says. "Tell me more?"

"Outlanders," Gabriel tsks, and then turns over again, restless but exhausted.

Jess rubs his back, pressing the damp sheet against him, hoping it soothes him. After a few moment, Gabriel relaxes and growls softly.

"Gabriel," Jess said, "you said you were pregnant before you left home..?"

"Yeah," Gabriel agrees. "Had to go through that – it's not safe to have your first birth in the outlands."

"Where is that child?"

"Dead," Gabriel says. "They were my first pregnancy, Jess."

Jess freezes. She wants to commiserate, console, but Gabriel's so matter of fact about it.

"I'm sorry..."

Gabriel twitches, and sighs, "I didn't think I'd be lucky enough to keep my first babies. I mean, I'd hoped, everyone does, but you're more likely to die than to have a live baby, the first time."

"...What?"

Gabriel twists in the bed again, and he's thoroughly wrapped himself in the sheet now. "It's different for outlanders, isn't it?"

Jess nods.

"You're lucky. It's so easy for you."

"But then why are you–"

Gabriel laughs, "I can't have a baby now, Jess. The selkies would figure it out, because they're _not_ stupid, just arrogant. I'd be taken from Sam, and I'd be dead within a year, if not a month – you've seen what they do to captive women, you've seen what my organ looks, like feels like."

"'Fragile'..." Jess says, realization welling up like bile in her mouth.

"Fragile," Gabriel agrees. "Sam was careful, you were careful, and heat made things a lot easier. I'll be all right but there is a reason I prefer female partners in sex. It's much safer."

"You can't get pregnant," and Jess makes a conclusion, "and you can't get torn..."

"And thus I won't hemorrhage trying to give birth through scar tissue." Gabriel murmurs. "I'm tired, Jess. Let me sleep?"

Jess stares at Gabriel for a long moment, then leans over, kisses his brow, kisses his lips. "Sleep, Gabriel. I'll check on you in the morning."

Gabriel blinks once, twice, and closes his eyes. His body presses into the poor mattress, and he's asleep.

Jess runs her fingers over his hair, and then down over his damp, covered body, pressing gently against his belly, before she gets up and goes to follow Sam to the roof and the star observations.

 

It takes three doses before Gabriel slips off the pregnancy. Three doses, and then two more days of misery. He stays in the playroom, because it's easier than tossing Sam and Jess out of their den. At least, that's what his reasoning is at first. Later, the cool stone floor of the playroom is attractive – he can sprawl on a rug when he's doing well, and flop over onto the bare floor when he's doing poorly. Plus, it's a lot easier to clean blood and vomit off the bare floor, or even one of the ragged rugs, than the rather nicer rugs in the bedchamber.

And he's surrounded by Chazaiel's scent, here in the playroom. It's a good reminder of why he's doing this – he's going to live, and he's going to take his son and his brothers' child far, far away from this island someday.

On the fifth day, when he's up to sitting up and wishing for tea, Sam comes for him – or maybe Sam has been looming every day and Gabriel's been too ill to notice.

"Hey," Sam murmurs, and hold out a tumbler of steaming liquid to him.

Gabriel's too tired to do more than raise his head and sniff at the broth – fish, probably dried cod simmered into something resembling pliability but not, sadly, into anything appetizing. Gabriel is heartily sick of fish.

"Hey," Sam says again, and peels Gabriel off the floor. Gabriel goes willingly, lets Sam prop him up in his arms and press the tumbler to his mouth. It is cod, as it turns out.

"No, eat some," Sam urges, and when Gabriel glares at him, scoops out bits of fish to shove into Gabriel's mouth.

At least the fish doesn't require much chewing – Gabriel can gulp it down without thinking about the taste. What he wouldn't give for roast marrow instead, or even beef tea – mutton tea, even.

"You need to get cleaned up," Sam says after forcing Gabriel to swallow half of the cup's contents.

Gabriel looks down at himself and sighs. He's a mess - wrapped in a sweaty, stinking sheet with blood all down his legs in tacky streaks. The only way this could be worse if there was shit and piss mixed in too. Gabriel had at least managed to use the chamber-pot for that.

"Need water," Gabriel says.

"There's half the broth left–"

" _Bath_ ," Gabriel snarls as Sam starts to ramble.

"Right, bath." Sam looks at him in slight bewilderment. "I suppose the rain barrel in the forge...?"

Gabriel is already exhausted, but that will do. He offers his arm to Sam, and lets the wolf-form pull him to his feet He drops the sheet, and wonders if they'll have to burn his bedding. He's almost sure he got off the mattress before staining it, but the sheets will only be salvageable if Jess is willing to dye them dark. They're not worth it, even for scraps, as far as Gabriel thinks right now.

So he walks naked down to his forge, with Sam at his side like a hen with just one chick. Gabriel crouches low against a wall, and waits for Sam to come back. And maybe for the room to stop tumbling.

Sam, clever thing that he is, gets into the water reserve in the old courtyard, and then Gabriel has an earnest wolf pouring water over him while trying to scrub his back.

Gabriel won't have it. He's weak, but he chose the action and the consequences of that action, and killing a potential baby means suffering through the results of that – Sam could have let him stay in his own filth until he was strong enough to get up on his own.

Eventually, Sam accepts that Gabriel doesn't want help washing himself, even if Sam and his wondrously agile cock is the reason for the days spent shivering on mattress and then floor.

Sam comes back eventually, with a simple length of fabric – an apron, of the sort Gabriel wears on the hottest days at the forge. Gabriel takes it immediately and after a moment's hesitation, puts it on.

The apron covers his genitals, which is all one can really ask of clothing, and he feels slightly more alive now, or at least more like an adult with two children to care for.

Soon, he might try putting a shirt, or maybe even his coat, with its wonderful quilting, extensive pockets, and above all, concealment from other eyes.

 

The next few days go easily – Gabriel still looks wan, but he gets back to work with a will and things return to normal.

Normal being the preparation for summer, and Sam is suddenly busy. He's working for Bobby now, one of any number of young men dragooned into the last minute repairs of the boats before they are pull off the beaches for the summer voyages.

The drakkars first, of course, but even the knorrs and karvis need tending. Sam's done this kind of work since he was tall enough to hold a pot of pitch.

Dean comes down the second day, and starts talking to Sam about his plans. Sam doesn't shudder at the thought of Dean raiding along the land surrounding Oxencross Town... the land was unused to pirates, and while Dean found the city unprepared, Sam doesn't think that will last. The entire coast is part of the Amalwo empire, after all, and the Kings in Bronze don't tolerate thieves.

"Anyway," Dean says, dismissing Sam's fears, "we have the fastest ships. Nothing beats my baby," he says, and pats the pitch-darkened planks of 'Impala' where she sits on the sand.

"Fast doesn't help if they've set an ambush, Dean," Sam tries again. "Please, just be a merchant this year."

"Stop being a pussy, Sam. I know what I'm doing."

Sam wants to cry at that, and when he gets home from a long day on the beaches, he finds no relief.

Jess looks distraught to the point of tears, Gabriel is hunched and defensive at the table, and Claire and Chaz are starkly terrified at the tension between adults.

"What _now_?" Sam barks, and winces when his tone makes Claire whimper and Chazaiel start howling.

Gabriel glares at Sam, and scoops up his child, murmuring nonsense and rocking the toddler. Claire scoots closer to her uncle, though not too close given that Chaz is still making unhappy laughing shrieks.

Jess gives Sam a peevish look, and stomps inside, abandoning the outside oven and clattering loudly around the indoor half of the kitchen.

"What?" Sam snaps at Gabriel.

The smith looks at him with eyes like amber chips, sharp and unfriendly.

Sam rolls his eyes – all he wants is his dinner, is that too much? – but goes inside to Jess.

"Your stepmother came by today," is the first thing Jess says.

"Ah..." Sam says. Kate can be... well, she's _Kate_.

"Apparently, she's doing you the huge favor of taking me with her to the summer dairy."

"Oh..." Sam is kind of surprised. Dairying means up in the hills, which is safer than the sea-coast during summer – raiders don't usually go further than a quick smash into an undefended settlement, stealing sheep and shepherds both.

"I don't like her."

Sam shrugs. What's he supposed to do about that? It's not like he and Kate get along that well either. She thinks he gets too many privileges for a non-selkie son, he thinks she would love to move her sons up in the family hierarchy, but Dean loves Sam first and foremost, and not any of their half-brothers. Not that Adam is bad, or any of the younger ones...

"She wants Claire and Chaz to come too."

"What? Why?" Sam can understand why she'd want Jess, maybe – putting Sam and Jess in their places, as Kate's a chieftain's wife, and Jess is at best Sam's concubine, because there is no way any non-selkie is allowed to acknowledge the woman he loves is his actual _wife_. But why take the kids?

"I think she has plans for Claire..." Jess says darkly.

"Claire's _twelve_."

Jess gives Sam a flat look. "... and god knows what she wants to do to Chaz. Gabriel kept his mouth shut while she was here, but he's freaking out. Kate wants to take his kitten away."

Sam winces. Gabriel is dangerously overprotective of Chazaiel; that's how he was captured on the raid, Dean's men threatened the baby and he caved. Now that Sam knows what Gabriel is – Chazaiel's mother, and one of the strangest werekind that exists and rarest – Sam thinks that he understands. Gabriel barely lets Chaz out of his sight, and never with someone outside the household...

"I'm going to talk to Bobby in the morning. Make sure you go with Ellen, not Kate."

Jess frowns. "Ellen's not a selkie either, though."

"But she's our master shipwright's wife. And let me tell you, you don't upset the best shipwright on the island, even if you are chieftain. And she's not afraid of Kate, either. She'll keep you safe."

Jess doesn't look convinced, but she merely twists her mouth, and says, "You get to convince Gabriel."

Sam sighs, and drops his head.

 

Jess doesn't have much to pack, when it comes down to it. A second dress, a second chemise, a folding spindle, sewing and nalbinding needles, an iron snip Gabriel made for her, a precious book to log nightly observations in, a pen with several iron nibs, an inkboard and a square of pigment to wet into ink. And the portable sextant in its case.

The portable, precious, irreplaceable sextant. Jess wants to carry it herself and she wants no responsibility for it – if anything happens to the instrument, it means another year of waiting, of Gabriel laboring to make such a fine instrument with the dross of a dozen raided, ravaged smithies, of Jess and Sam figuring out the quirks and misalignments of a new sextant and how to best compensate for them.

Jess holds the case and thinks of the story of the woman carrying the box of evils. This case doesn't hold the woe of the world, but it feels a little like it.

Thankfully, Claire hasn't done more than look worried and unhappy when Jess rouses her and gets the girl to pull her own threadbare shifts into a bundle. Chazaiel has more than a few wraps to himself, but he's not housebroken yet, so of course he needs more clothing than Jess or Claire do. There's something to be said for chamber pots, and it's all said in the mess of a baby with a dirty diaper – something which Jess is not looking forward to in the coming weeks.

"I have Chaz's clothes, Miss Jess, and his rag mouse too," Claire says, and plops another bundle of clothes on top of her own on the kitchen table.

Jess smiles at the girl, and runs her fingers over the ragged toy on the top of the pile. Chazaiel has chewed on his rag mouse enough that it's disemboweled and floppy. She's pretty sure it was a stiffly stuffed piece of quiltwork not long ago.

"Thank you, Claire," Jess says, and goes to find Chazaiel. The baby is not sleeping in the playroom, or on Gabriel's pallet in the alcove out in the hall, such as it is.

Jess can't find him in the house at all, and allows herself to become worried until she comes down to the forge, and finds Gabriel dressed in kilt and coat, the overgarment hanging off one shoulder as Chazaiel is tucked into the loose fabric, clinging to Gabriel like a monkey as the smith talks softly to the child.

"Gabriel..." Jess says.

Gabriel ignores her, though his face goes hard and frightful for a minute.

"Gabriel..." Jess repeats.

"Go away, Jess," Gabriel says after another long moment.

"No. You have to stop being difficult–"

"Difficult?" Gabriel says in a light playful tone, too cheerful for his words. Jess notices the baby in his arms grins at the words, with little understanding. "I haven't begun to be difficult..."

"Sam says it's safer to go up into the hills," Jess says.

"He's just a baby, Jess," Gabriel says.

"And you want him to be safe, don't you?" Jess asks. When Gabriel looks over his son's head with stricken eyes, Jess feels like a bastard for making Gabriel worry.

"Safe is with me," Gabriel says at last.

Jess doesn't have a lot of faith in her ability to protect to two non-Kind and non-kin children from anyone, least of all Sam's stepmother. She only hopes that Ellen, whom she's only met a few times, and never really had a chance to talk to, can protect them all.

Sam sticks his head into this stand-off, and says, "Ellen's here."

Gabriel clutches his child closer and he giggles, which makes Chaz upset, enough that Sam frowns and backs away from the scene. Gabriel glares as Sam disappears, and then turns his glare on Jess.

"Don't look at me like that," Jess snaps, and takes Chaz out Gabriel's arms, though not without a stand-off.

"You will protect my son," Gabriel hisses at the last moment, right before he lets Jess take the baby.

"Yes, I promise," Jess says, and adds something she's only read about, a formality among the hyena clans of the east. "I swear it on my name and hearth, Gabriel."

Gabriel narrows his eyes, and replies, "On your name and hearth, so be it, Jessica."

The menace behind Gabriel's tongue is unnerving, and Jess retreats out of the smith with a shiver in her spine.

"This her?" a woman asks Sam when she turns in the doorway from almost backing into her. The woman is middling-tall, with blondish, brownish hair and a tired, resigned look on her face.

This must be Ellen, Bobby the Shipwright's wife, and Jess's protector for the summer. Jess greets her timidly with a faint, "Hello."

"Yes, this is Jess," Sam says, with all the glee of a boy showing off his catch of live frogs. "And Chazaiel – he and his cousin are going with you."

Ellen gives Sam a weather eye, and says "Well, I've seen worse."

This is not, Jess knows, an auspicious start to an entire season with the woman. Crap.

 

Gabriel doesn't like the woman Ellen. It's not fair of him, but she's taking his babies away and he can't allow himself to be as angry with Sam as he should be, so he's glaring at the woman in exchange.

"Uncle, I'm ready," Claire says, as she comes down the stairs. She's got her things bundled in a neat stack – her parent Amelia's influence, not his brothers, since Castiel was perpetually unaware of his appearance, and James was sloppy by long habit, to conceal Castiel's deficiencies from childhood onward.

"Where's your coat?" Gabriel asks immediately. "Get it out, child. You're carrying Chaz."

"Uncle..."

"You are not letting those strangers carry your cousin, Claire Amelia's-son."

"Miss Jess has him! He'll be fine," his niece whines.

"Claire."

Claire rolls her eyes, and stamps her feet, but unties her bundle enough to pull out her overcoat. It's still slightly too big for her, and the sturdy open-weave linen is a bland, boring grey, instead of the wild patterning of fortunate bats and cogwheels she should have at her age.

Gabriel pulls the wide belt from her fumbling hands, and ties it around Claire's waist himself.

"Okay?" Claire says when he's finished, obviously only tolerating his fussing by the barest of margins.

"No, but you'll do." He turns her by her shoulders and takes her out into to greet Ellen and the rest of her party.

There are little sturdy horses, laded with all sorts of things – bedding, cookpots, small barrels that smell of oats and pickled fish – and any number of milling youngsters.

"Jess," Gabriel says as he steers Claire over to the cat, who is standing next to Sam, and Ellen, and a very pregnant selkie that might be Ellen's own child, by the color of her hair and the shape of her face.

"Hey, Gabriel," Jess says, and then frowns as Chaz perks up and reaches for Gabriel, happy to see his parent among too many unfamiliar faces.

Gabriel takes Chaz easily, even though Jess keeps frowning at him, and bounces his child for a moment, until Chaz whoops in glee.

"Claire," Gabriel says, and lifts his chin.

"He's going to pee on me," Claire grumbles as she steps closer obediently, and pulls one arm out of her coat without unbelting it.

"He might. But you know his signals by now, and you know how to deal with it," Gabriel says as he slips Chaz onto Claire's back, and ties his son on with a cross-band. Claire is still looking disgruntled as he helps her pull her coat-sleeve on, especially since Chazaiel is trying to nibble on her hair. Gabriel frowns at him, and taps his nose. That only amuses Chaz, and Gabriel has to pin up Claire's hair quickly, to keep the baby from tugging it and bothering his cousin all day.

"Now, Claire," Gabriel says, leaning down to look in Claire's eyes. "You're responsible for your cousin. You've got to act like a hearth-brother to him, and protect him. I want you to do that, and to listen to Jess like she was one of your uncles, and to Miss Ellen as if she were our house-holder."

"Yes, Uncle," Claire says.

"Keep up with your mathematics and your writing lessons – you have your wax tablet? Good, and I expect you to make a good account of yourself."

"Yes, Uncle," Claire says again, and then her facade of bored tolerance of adult foibles breaks, and she seizes Gabriel in a hug. "I'll miss you."

"I'll miss you, too, Claire," Gabriel says.

It's hard to see Claire walk away with Jess, following Ellen's menagerie into the hills. He wants to follow, wants to run after and take his baby back from among strangers and outlanders, but he knows he can't. It truly is safer for Jess and the children up in the hills, under Ellen's watchful eye – if they're there, Sam's friction with his father's wife is eased some, and yet she has no direct power over them.

It doesn't stop Gabriel from wanting to kill everyone and all who took his son, tiny and too young, from him. Starting with Sam.

He goes inside his smithy and spends the rest of the day beating out his frustration on iron hoes and mattocks. There's a lot of it to use up.

 

Sam makes dinner to apologize. Or tries to, anyway. He's not at all good at cooking. The meat is charred in places, and too pink in others, and Sam's not sure what he was supposed to do with the bread, but Gabriel comes up from cleaning himself with the rain water and shoos Sam away from the oven before anything else begins to burn.

"I'm not very good at this," Sam says.

"Cut the onions, Sam." Gabriel gives him a sideways glance as he starts chopping, just to make sure Sam isn't cutting his own fingers off, possibly, and sets to save what can be saved out of their dinner.

Sam sighs in defeat, and does so.

"No reason for you to have skills – I remember your rooms in Oxencross Town. Second floor of an insula – did they even have a kitchen hearth there, or did you have to go to a cookshop?" Gabriel asks absently, as he pours water from the room's pitcher into an iron pot and tosses the rabbit that Sam hadn't successfully cooked in.

"There was a cookshop across the way."

Gabriel snorts. "Just as well. You lived in a building full of university scholars. Any one of them could have set the whole quarter on fire trying to cook dinner."

Sam sighs. No one was supposed to have a fire at all where he'd lived in Oxencross Town – heating in winter was supplied by the caldarium on the ground floor, and that rarely. It hadn't stopped people from having braziers, but only small ones out on their balconies, in sandboxes to contain them. Sometimes you just need fire, to brew tisanes, or run interesting experiments about steam in confined metal containers.

"You seem to know what you're doing..." Sam said.

"I'm a metalsmith. If I didn't know what I was doing around fire, I'd be dead," Gabriel points out as he drops the pot lid down, sealing the pot and shoving it toward the center of the oven's hot surface. "Allowing me to keep a cookfire was hardly a risk in comparison."

"So you knew how to cook when you arrived...?" Sam asks.

"Can't leave home without knowing how to take care of yourself," Gabriel says. "It's criminal that you were allowed to. What was your parent thinking?"

"I ran away to go to university, Gabriel. It wasn't like Dad neglected to teach me things out of spite." Sam says. He thinks about pointing out that cooking is women's work, at least when there are women around, and any man who takes it up even on sea voyages will be teased and even tormented for doing so. Saying that to Gabriel wouldn't be wise, to say the least, so Sam keeps his mouth shut.

Gabriel gives Sam another sidelong glance, then shrugs and tears apart the bread Sam had fetched up from the bakery before his ill-considered attempt at cooking. The smith throws butter onto the griddle, and toasts the bread as the butter melts, creating a crisp brown crust. Then he takes the toasted chunks and dumps them into the pot.

"Bread soup?" Sam asks.

"Like you were doing better," Gabriel says, and takes the onions Sam has cut up and throws them on the griddle with more melting butter. The onions fry within minutes, and Gabriel spoons them into the pot as well.

Then the smith turns back to Sam, and gives him a long look. "How did you ever survive alone?"

Sam flushes. He worked as a longshoreman for weeks, loading and unloading ships and river barges, until he had enough of the language and customs. Then there was the ragged school at night, when he was so tired that his body just throbbed – but he sucked down the knowledge with the same hunger he'd devoured the slop from dockside cookshops. Within the first year, he had earned a place as a provisional student in the university on sheer ability, and afterward he'd not looked back.

"I managed. Lots of people do."

Gabriel rolls his eyes. "Lot of people die in a ditch, too."

"I'm alive. You're alive."

"And the broth is almost finished, so we'll be eating fine tonight?" Gabriel asks.

Sam blinks in surprise, but there does seem to be a nice smell from the pot.

"Smells like."

Gabriel waits a few more minutes, and then he's ladling bready broth into bowls for dinner. It's on the bland side, but at least it seems to have escaped utter disaster. Sam eats it without any complaint, and Gabriel says nothing at all as he slurps his own meal.

"Will you come to the roof with me?" Sam says as Gabriel opens the oven and smothers the fire to banked embers.

The smith pours the last of the water into the pot, diluting the remaining broth so that it can simmer through the night.

"I will," Gabriel nods.

They go up to the roof, and Sam takes his star readings, calling them out as Gabriel records them in the logbook in his heavy, crooked hand. It's not the worst night of summer.

 

Jess opens the sextant case, and loops the cord around her neck first thing. It would be a disaster to drop it and bend the angle – all of Gabriel's hard work in making it would be ruined with a bend distorting it.

She runs through her checks, and then begins her sights for the night – horizon and Dog Star, horizon and Pole Star, horizon and the Giant's Shoulder, the Serpent's Head, the Serpent's Backbone, the Follower, the First Sister, the Ghoul's Head, the River's Mouth, the Flying Eagle, on and on as she observes and records each star.

"You do that every night, why?" Jo asks, standing in the doorway of the cottage.

Jess looks at the other woman in surprise, and freezes for a minute, at a loss to explain in a way that won't draw suspicions. She looks down at the sextant in her hands, and comes out with, "Sam wants me to..."

"Why? What use is it?" Jo asks.

"Joanna Beth," Ellen says, coming up behind her daughter, "Stop pestering Jess. She's doing what her man wants – you'd have done the same."

"I just want to know what star-gazing has to do with anything," Jo frowns. "It's not going to help catch fish or cut timber..."

"That's for Sam to figure, isn't it? That's why Dean brought him back, to figure things for the family?" Ellen says.

Jo snorts. "My Adam can figure things. Sam's always had his head in the clouds. In the stars, now," she says, and turns herself to go inside, waddling with the stumpy gait of late pregnancy.

Ellen watches her daughter go in, and then comes further out into the yard. "Jo's just tetchy with that new baby she's cooking up. Don't mind her none, Jess."

Jess nods after a moment's consideration. "It must be hard, being pregnant and not able to change to alter-form."

Ellen snorts. "She could change if she wanted to. She just doesn't want to – there's nothing bigger than a stream this far onto the upland, and she wouldn't really be able to go swimming."

Jess tries not to smile, because the selkie women who comes to summer dairylands for safety really _are_ upset about not being able to swim except in a few hot springs and the sparse river depths. And those aren't deep enough for a seal to really feel free.

"I'm glad I'm a cat, sometimes," Jess admits, taking off the sextant and sealing it back up in its case.

"Being a wolf isn't bad either," Ellen says.

Jess looks up at that. "I didn't know you were a wolf?! I've never seen you change!"

Ellen snorts, "Do I look like a selkie to you?"

Jess looks at Ellen, weathered and sly around the edges, and far more aware than is comfortable. "I just assumed, I guess. Bobby's so high in John's counsel–"

"You thought he'd have a proper wife, then?"

Jess shrugs, not dismissive, just admitting that she assumed wrong. "Why doesn't he – have a selkie wife, then? Because I know he's just married to you."

"He's married to me now," Ellen admits. "But... well, he had a cat wife before, and I had Bill."

Jess makes an encouraging noise, hoping Ellen with go on.

"Girl, what do you know about Sam's momma?"

"She was a wolf, like him, and she was kidnapped when Sam was little. John's other wife Kate raised Sam and Dean alongside her own sons."

"Hell she did," Ellen snaps. "No, that's not fair. Kate kept them fed and clothed, but she didn't love them, not like Mary did."

"I suppose it's hard to raise someone else's children," Jess concedes.

" _I_ did more to raise those boys than Kate did," Ellen snaps, "Mary was my packmate, before. I owed her."

Jess thinks of what she knows of wolves – they didn't live in her hometown much, and the ones at Oxencross Town were typical student-scholars in her field, living and breathing mathematics.

"We were taken together, back when John was no more than an ambitious shipmaster, not the Chieftain of Walrus Tongue," Ellen explains. "It was sheer luck we stayed as close as we did – that raid, they split the captives all over. Luck, and maybe a little conniving on Mary's part – she always had a better head for politics than I did.

"She cozied up to John quick as you please, convinced me to make nice with Bill, Jo's father – he wasn't a bad man, not one to hit or snarl unless you started it – and we wound up as wives. Which was considerably better than a lot of people that year."

"But?" Jess asks.

Ellen looks away, "We lost the songs – I did, I mean. Mary and I used to sing them – hunting songs, cradle songs, all sorts of songs, together. But then she got kidnapped in a raid on the coast when Sam was no more than a mite, and there's no one I can sing them with."

"Why not Sam? I mean, he's not got the best voice–"

"He was a boy. A man, now. The songs I miss, they were women's songs."

Jess pauses at that. "Then teach me? I'm a woman."

"You're a cat, girl."

"But my cubs might be wolves," Jess says.

"If you ever catch," Ellen says, a doubting look in her eyes.

"I will," Jess says, and extends the lie, "It was bad luck I didn't this time past."

Ellen gives her a wary look, and turns away. "I'll think about it."

Jess watches her go into the cottage, and looks up at the sky, wondering. Will she ever have cubs to sing to, free under an open sky? She so wants to be away, to be free, but the risk seems so high right now, and that goal so far away.

She sighs, and picks up the sextant in its case, and walks herself into the cottage for the night.

Tomorrow will be another day, a more hopeful one if she's lucky.

 

Gabriel didn't like boats – oh, he could swim if he had to, it was part and parcel of the training he'd received before leaving his homeland – but the truth was the motion of the waves made him queasy. The weeks trapped by the raiders in their open ship had been quite the worst days of his life. Even the end of his first pregnancy, knowing that he was carrying only death, had been less terrible – at least he'd had his parent and siblings to rely on then. On the ship, he'd only had terrified Chazaiel.

"This will float?" he asks, touching the beached form gingerly. He knows it's not going to bite, but still, he doesn't like it.

"Eventually," Sam says, a chuckle in his voice. The tall wolf-skin leans over Gabriel and points out what looks like severe structural defects to Gabriel's smithing eyes. "We'll have to pull the planks here, unspring them and replace them, but if we get good wood and do it properly, it'll be a sea-worthy ship."

Gabriel frowns, and runs his fingers over the wood. He doesn't know if the damage is from battle, age, or the elements, but it looks like major repairs to him. He gives Sam a weather eye, and then boosts himself over the rim of the hull. It's a bit of job, even though the boat is fairly shallow from top to bottom, or whatever the technical term is. He doesn't know, or much care, because it's a _boat_.

The wood under his bare feet doesn't feel rotted, and the planking isn't bad to walk on, but from inside the boat, it seems very small. Gabriel's quite sure the narrow cargo boats that plied the canals back in the homelands were bigger – longer, anyway – than this ruin is.

"It seems small."

"It's a faering, not a knorr," Sam says as he leans against the boat, his hands on the edge as he peeks over.

Gabriel gives him a questioning look.

"A faering – a four-oar, well, this one is probably an eight-oar, boat. You can make a sea-crossing in it, but it's really a fishing boat, and maybe a coaster. I could run this on sails almost by myself."

Gabriel glances at the bow and the stern where the rudder stick lies snapped in half. "You might have to..."

"Don't say that, Gabriel. You'll be fine," Sam says confidently. Or maybe he's just trying to make Gabriel feel better.

"I'm not a sailor..."

"Damn right you're not," comes the voice of Sam's brother Dean, who has apparently walked up the beach and under the curve of the boat so that Gabriel couldn't see him until he popped his head by Sam.

"Sammy, you're really going to try to get this wreck afloat?" the selkie asks.

"It'd prove I can build boats, Dean," Sam says. "Bobby said all right, now that all the ships are repaired for the summer."

"Yeah, but this thing? With _his_ help?" Dean jams a thumb in Gabriel's direction.

Gabriel wants to snarl and snap, but sets his jaw and tries to breathe through his fury at Sam's brother. He always wants to snarl and snap at the selkie, and he always has to swallow his anger and play meek, play mild.

"Gabriel does what _I_ say," Sam says, not quite reproaching his brother in that way he has. Gabriel is thankful for it, even though he wants to bite Sam too, now and often.

Dean rolls his eyes. "We finally got a smith and you want to play shipwright with him..."'

"I've finished the hoes your brother asked for," Gabriel offers, trying to distract the selkie. "Is there more ironwork that needs doing..?"

Dean snorts, "Nah. Not unless you're up to making swords..?"

"Weaponsmithing is a specialized art," Gabriel says softly. "I can do basics – knives, arrowheads, but if it's a sword you want..?"

"Didn't think so," Dean dismisses him, waving him off. Gabriel waits silently, watching as Sam's brother ignores him to pester Sam about the boat instead, "You're going to need better wood..."

"Bobby says I can take the leftovers from the seasoned wood – it won't be the best or the most beautiful, but I think I can repair the damage."

"What'll we do if you take the seasoned wo–"

"I'm going to replace it, Dean. I know that – I thought I'd take Gabriel and do a trek to the birch stands after you set out. That'll be the time to cut more wood for seasoning anyway, when the trees are still healthy."

Dean gives it a moment's consideration, and then he and Sam and discussing technical aspects of boat building that fly over Gabriel's head, especially since they're using words that Gabriel only has a vague idea of the meanings.

Instead, Gabriel hunkers down on his heels, and waits for Dean to leave or Sam to remember his existence. His eyes flick over the wooden bones of the boat, ribs springing out of its arching, flattened shape. He wonders how the ship will be set, and if there are ways to improve the rudder – right now, the strength needed to wield it is probably enormous, given the size of it. It looks like it will be awkward when they leave, when the only experienced sailor is Sam.

Gabriel looks, and waits, and thinks what he needs to do, to make, to _fucking_ create to make their odds better.

 

 

Kate is visiting, so Jess spends most of the day separating curds from whey. When she's still there after noon, Jess pulls yarn out of a basket and finds a far corner of the yard to anchor her tablets to; at least the tablets are portable, and she can weave tape and trim far away from Sam's stepmother and her criticisms.

Claire winds up playing games with the selkie children out in the yard – something that took kicking a ball around to enjoy, even though the children mostly argued over who had done what right and wrong, according to rules Jess couldn't discern. Mostly the fights were resolved by Ben, who being the chieftain's grandson was considered the authority, though he was not impartial, or even well-versed in the rules, to judge by the number of howls of outrage that erupted in the wake of his rulings.

Claire seems happy, though, and she's the fast child playing, all long and coltish limbs. She's growing up, Jess notices, and is taller than all the boys her age – something that may not be good for her. Jess doesn't know if Sam will be allowed to protect her much longer.

"I suppose she'll do," Jess hears from across the yard, as Kate sniffs unhappily as she watches the children run themselves to exhaustion.

"She's a sweet girl, and smart," Ellen agrees. "The boy who marries her is lucky."

Kate snorts, "She'll be lucky. Ben is John's eldest grandson – even as a starter wife, that girl will be higher than she merits."

"Don't be like that, Kate –"

"The girl isn't a selkie. She's some damned skinny cat – a cat, Ellen!"

"She's the closest thing Sam has to a daughter–"

"Like Dean needs to marry his son off for his brother's support! Sam needs Dean's support!"

"And so does Adam," Ellen says, a faint growl in her voice, "So stop trying to snag this set-up before it sets sail, Kate. Adam and Jo don't have a girl to offer up yet, and even if Jo's baby turns out to be a girl, there's no way Dean would make Ben wait the 12 years for her to grow. He's looking to get Ben settled with a starting marriage in 2 years, not a dozen."

"He could still do better than _that_ ," Kate says dismissively.

Jess clutches the tablets in her hand, clenching them tight as she stops weaving. Claire is a sweet girl, a lovely girl, but still a child, and they're talking about her like she's a steer approaching slaughter weight.

"She's the blacksmith's niece... that's a valuable connection."

Kate almost barks with scorn. "He's timid, soft... any man worth their balls would have fought harder, not just crumpled."

"John had his little boy. You saying you wouldn't have crumpled if some raider had used Adam against you when he was a tot?" Ellen asks.

"I'm a woman, not a man. The blacksmith though – sometimes I think John didn't castrate him because what would have been the point. He's got no balls already."

Ellen snorts. "Just because a fellow takes the safe road, doesn't mean he hasn't got nerve."

"Have you ever seen that blacksmith do anything worth–"

"Aw, Kate, you're not paying attention. Who gets the best tools, right when he asks for them? My Bobby, and Sam, because Gabriel wants respect, same as any man."

"John gets what he orders."

"Oh, yeah, but just what he orders, just as he wanted it. The blacksmith isn't a fool. It's good work, too, but not the best, not the stuff with soul. Bobby asks _nice_ , and you've seen what we get – the best knives, those clever hinges, the pieces that work and are beautiful too."

Jess's hair stands up, because Ellen is too damned perceptive, and if she's noticed that Gabriel only puts the extra effort, his cleverness and innovation, into the work for people who respect him – who treat him as a person, not a mill for making iron tools – then she's too observant by half, and Jess needs to keep farther from the old wolf-woman. Their escape plan pivots on their keen observations and everyone else's blindness.

"He should be giving those to John, and Dean and Adam."

"Maybe if your husband didn't bark, he'd get them," Ellen says, and there is a hint of a chuckle in her voice.

Kate growls herself, and stalks across the yard, yelling to Ben to wipe the dust off and come in from playing with children so much beneath him.

Jess watches her go, and tries not to shake in fear and fury.

 

Gabriel is brushing Sam out in alter-form when Dean comes by. Considering Sam spent the day hauling planks and sealing holes, he's happy for the attention. He should, to be kind, give Gabriel the same, but while Sam will change to get his thick fur brushed out, Gabriel won't, and Sam is hesitant to push anything else.

They are on very shaky footing with each other, ever since Jess and the children went to the summer dairy. Sam feels like he's skidded back to the early days of their acquaintance, when Gabriel was the best tool-maker the university could hire, but so prickly around students like Sam.

"Scram," is all Dean says.

Gabriel hesitates, but tucks the rake into its protective pouch, stands, and bows shallowly to Sam before he disappears up the stairs.

Dean watches him go, and snorts.

Sam transforms to glare at Dean; he'd been enjoying the attention.

"Have fun being pampered, Sammy?"

Sam just rolls his eyes "I was replanking the boat today, Dean. You'd be sore too."

"Yeah, but I'm not lying around getting _brushed_."

Sam just sighs. Dean might not like getting brushed – but he had two wives and several other women in his household to pamper him.

"You might as well cut his balls off and give him a girl's name," Dean goes on. "He's already your bitch, walking around in a skirt."

"It's a kilt, Dean. Men wear them in the south because it gets _hot_."

"If it looks like a skirt, and fits like a skirt, it's a skirt, Sammy."

Sam frowns. "Is there something you actually want, Dean? Because I am _tired_ , and you interrupted me getting rest."

Dean looks a little surprised, like he didn't think Sam was doing anything important, or had even earned the right to unwind. It's not like Sam hasn't spent the past weeks repairing all of Dean's warships, working himself and Gabriel into exhaustion in order to get the fleet ready for the summer voyaging season. If Sam wants to sit back and get his fur brushed out, who is Dean to object?

... Sam's older brother, the one who was born right, and the one whose patronage is going to determine the fate of Sam and his children, if he ever has any. Damnit

"You're definitely going to stay here this summer?"

"I had planned to."

"You could come with me. I could make a place for you..." Dean said hopefully.

"On your ship?" Where Sam would be treated like a callow youth because he couldn't change to a sea-going form, and would be at a disadvantage in many activities, if he could do them at all. "You'd have to push someone out of their position to make room for me, Dean. No."

"Aww, Sammy..."

"No, Dean." Sam sighs, and rubs his hands through his hair. He has to make a good case, or Dean will continue to wheedle, trying to get him to take a position that didn't suit him when he was sixteen, let alone now. "I'll do better staying home this year, proving to Bobby that I _can_ build ships."

"That's your plan," Dean asks, "Becoming one of Bobby's boat-boys."

"Becoming a shipwright," Sam counters.

"You'd get more prestige coming with me."

"No," Sam says. "You'd get the prestige. I wouldn't get any credit, except by accident. We both remember how that works, Dean," he points out at Dean's sour look. "I can make myself invaluable working on ships."

"There's no glory in building ships," Dean whines.

"I'm not looking for glory," Sam says. "Respect, and safety..."

"Who's going to piss you off when you're my brother?" Dean asks.

Sam sighs. Dean likes to think he's inviolable, that no one would cross him, but the truth is there are plenty of men who'd attack Sam to get to Dean, and some of them are on Dean's own crew. Some of them would attack Sam to clear their own path to curry Dean's favor, and some of them would do it so that Dean had few allies when they got their nerve up to attack Dean himself.

"I'm staying here this summer, Dean," Sam repeats.

"Wimp," Dean says, without heat. "Maybe I should get you a skirt too."

Sam pulls back his lips at that, just a hint of a snarl. "That's not funny!"

"Joking, joking!" Dean says. "Sheesh. One lame joke, and you're all pissy. Maybe you do need to get pampered... or at least laid."

"Dean..."

Dean laughs suddenly. "Aww, shit, Sammy, did I interrupt your plans? Were you working your way up to banging that bitchy blacksmith of yours? You should have said!"

Sam just pinches the bridge of his nose.

"My mistake! I was going to send up one of the girls with some beer, but I'll just be moseying along," he laughs, and starts down the path towards his own house with a cheery wave and a smirking grin.

Sam wants to bang his head on the doorjamb, especially when he walks upstairs, and sees Gabriel sitting at the inside table, his eyes all smoky with emotion, and his fingers stroking over the fur rake.

Sam looks at the wicked sharp tines of the rake, and contemplates what Gabriel could do with it, given the strength of his arm and the accuracy of his strikes from his long days swinging his smith's hammer.

"Sorry about that. Dean's..."

"An asshole?" Gabriel finishes Sam's thought.

"Yeah."

"We can't choose our blood, just our house," Gabriel says, and disappears down the hall towards the bedchambers. Sam hears him go into the playroom instead of Sam's own den – the floor sounds different under his feet, that's how Sam can tell – and Sam resigns himself to sleep alone tonight, and waking up sore in the morning, with no one to rub his back.

Damnit.

 

The work on the boat is at the point where they just need to stop and let things set a while – the strakes are bent and just need to set before they move on to flipping the boat and working on the insides.

And Sam really wants to see Jess. He misses her, and frankly, he's going to do something he'll be embarrassed by if he doesn't see her soon – like tumbling one of the servant women left behind on the coast, or trying to get Gabriel into his bed again. He's not sure what would be worse – the servant women are rather free for the taking, if you're not picky about sharing indiscriminately, but Sam has never felt comfortable with that. One too many looks saying he's overreaching himself without Dean around to back him up, he supposes.

And trying anything with Gabriel would just be profoundly stupid – Sam might be in charge of the smith by all the rules and assumptions of his selkie kin, but pushing the blacksmith into anything is likely to get Sam's testicles in a vise. Possibly literally.

So he just works on the boat until he can't anymore, and then tells Gabriel one night, "Tomorrow, we're going up to Ellen's dairy. Pack what you need."

"What?" Gabriel snaps, from where he was cleaning up his forge. He's been making nails and tongs for Bobby, all sorts of fiddly little iron bits that the master shipwright wants. Since Dean and Adam are gone on a summer voyage, it's been all sorts of smaller work for the smith. No pressure for blades, for one.

"It's a thing that needs doing, Gabriel. Someone needs to bring up eggs and such to the women, and bring down some of the cheese and butter, and maybe some of the lesser beasts for summer slaughter."

"And you volunteered?" Gabriel asks as he follows Sam up the stairs into the house.

There's some bread set out on the oven, and Sam has cold puffin meat from Bobby's – one of the women gave him some, knowing that he had no one but Gabriel to cook for him, and Gabriel is frankly too busy.

"Why are you balking? It's a chance for you to see Claire and Chazaiel before the autumn," Sam points out as he tears into the meat.

"And it's a chance for you to see Jess," Gabriel adds.

"Well, yes. We can compare notes, see if the framed sextant and portable one agree."

"Long nights, looking at the stars..."

"What's your point?"

"You're missing Jess," Gabriel says.

"We're mates," Sam says.

"No, you're her owner. You were mates back in Oxencross Town. What's the matter, think your pet has found a better master?"

Sam frowns, his lips curling up. He wants to flatten in his ears back, but he doesn't have ones that move in this shape.

"Shut up, Gabriel."

"No. Not when I can tell you're planning something stupid just because you're not getting your dick wet anymore."

Sam snarls at that, and changes. His fur bristles all out along his ruff as he lunges at Gabriel.

The solid fist to his jaw knocks him off his feet, and Gabriel is on him in a minute, body heavy in human form, and arms pinching tight around Sam's neck as he tries to twist and snap the smith off him.

"No!" Gabriel says, and he pinches the back of Sam's neck, pulling at the loose skin and pinning Sam to the ground until Sam can't stand the rage and humiliation anymore and begins to whine.

"You're an idiot!" Gabriel says, and stands up, his hand still on back of Sam's neck, pulling the skin of neck and shoulders tight enough that Sam can only pant and grin pathetically while Gabriel pulls Sam into the depths of the house by his ear.

Gabriel lets go when he shoves Sam into the bedroom, and kicks the door shut. "Don't try it!" he snarls when Sam bares his teeth again, and makes to snap.

Gabriel's between him and the door. Gabriel is between him and the door and pissed.

Sam's tail drops in dismay, and then he shakes it off. He's in charge here, he's the chieftain's son, the war-captain's brother.

He lunges at Gabriel.

He goes down like a bowl of spilt oatmeal as Gabriel transforms lightening fast and leaps forward his own self.

Sam tries to bite, going for muzzle and nape, just like a wolf should, but Gabriel cackles at him and grabs him by the back of his thigh and flings him around so that he lands with a thud.

The smith gapes with mouth wide for a moment, and then snaps his teeth shut high on Sam's hind leg, perilously close to his cock. Gabriel's jaws don't sink through Sam's flesh, but the grip is like a vise, impossible to struggle against.

"Shit!" Sam yelps, as Gabriel just pulls back his teeth enough to whoop at him. Sam growls feebly in response, but drops his head back down, showing throat and drooping his tail.

"Huh," Gabriel says as he releases Sam's hip. "You gave up easier than I thought you would."

"You had your teeth near my penis!" Sam yelps.

"You say that like it wasn't a fair tactic," Gabriel whoops in amusement.

"My _penis_!" Sam yelps.

"It's still there," Gabriel says, "Look." And he pushes his nose into Sam's crotch and runs his big flat tongue over the sheathed tip of Sam's penis.

"– _gleek_!–" is Sam's articulate reaction. The momentary jolt of sensation is embarrassingly good, and his penis pushes out of its sheath just a little.

Gabriel just looks amused, and sits down by Sam's head.

"Uhm," Sam says hesitantly, as Gabriel's own dick – well, sort of dick – is now right there, in Sam's face.

"I won. You have to reciprocate," Gabriel points out. When Sam doesn't, he adds, "Or I could bite you again, harder this time."

Sam gives Gabriel a look. "Who the hell ends a fight that way?"

"Hyenas," Gabriel whoops, and shows all his teeth.

Sam flicks his ears back and down and grimaces.

"There, that wasn't so bad, was it?" Gabriel says a moment later, and puts his forefoot on Sam's neck as he settles behind Sam. There's a smile in his voice.

"You would say that," Sam grumbles.

"I would and I did," Gabriel says, and holds Sam down as he begins to lick Sam all over, the way Jess did back in Oxencross Town when he was sick.

Sam finds it kind of humiliating, to be held down like a naughty pup and groomed, until it occurs to Sam that this Gabriel's way of being _comforting_ , of reassuring Sam of his regard, or Sam's status in Gabriel's wacky family structure.

That's when Sam finds it _really_ humiliating. And worse, really, really _nice_.

 

In the morning, Gabriel wakes to find Sam's head tucked under his chin and Sam's hands gripping his ass and thigh sleepily. It's not the worse way he's ever woken up – that would be unexpectedly in heat at the age of fourteen, with little enough idea how to cope with it in spite of a thorough education and with fuck-all judgment about what do about it, other than bang every member of his scholasticium who'd been up for it – but it's uncomfortable anyway.

"Sam," he grunts, and pushes Sam away, or tries to. Sam weighs more than he does in human-form, and even his strength doesn't help much with Sam sprawling like a very cuddly bundle of rocks. It's annoying that Sam's human-form is so unwieldy and so feminine – his alter-form is so adorable and wispy, almost a distillation of masculine cuteness, and that's even with the fact that Gabriel isn't usually attracted to canines. Sam's wolf shape is just so dainty, it's hard to resist his charms.

It's rather easier to resist Sam now, when he's spread over the bed and Gabriel – all muscles and broad shoulders. He's too big, and Gabriel's not in heat. He prefers outlander _women_ for recreational sex, not outlander men – he's not going to risk another pregnancy, especially an out-of-season one.

"Whu...?" Sam snuffles, and makes a whine in his throat. It's adorably cubbish, and Gabriel finds himself smirking as Sam makes more confused, not yet awake sounds. So, maybe Gabriel does find Sam cute, even like this, even when he's not in heat. The wolf skin is rather adorable in this form too, at least when he's sleepy enough that his youth shines through.

"I'm not a pillow, Sam," Gabriel says.

"Uh!" Sam manages, jerking away, and then lifting his head blearily. His hands are on Gabriel's chest now, pushing as Sam tries to sort himself out.

Gabriel shakes Sam's hands off and sits up. There's only a sliver of light from around the door, enough to see by, but nothing to indicate that they've slept the night through.

"Are you over yourself?" Gabriel asks as Sam sits up.

Sam has the grace to look shame-faced. He nods, miserably.

"Good," Gabriel says.

"I'm sorry," Sam mutters, "I'm just missing Jess..."

"I'm missing Claire and Chaz, and you don't see me acting like an idiot."

Sam looks down and away. He's arching his neck a little, tossing his head as he turns away. Gabriel's dealt with wolves enough to know that gesture, though he's not sure if Sam even knows he makes it.

Gabriel reaches out and strokes his thumb over Sam's neck, up from the hollow and over his vein and artery, until his fingers curl behind Sam's ears, and he scratches gently. Sam doesn't know it, Gabriel doesn't think, but he's nearly tame, the way his eyes close and he just sighs in release.

"I really think visiting Jess is a good idea. We've done as much as we can on the boat for a while, you've finished all the work Bobby's set for you –"

"–And you miss Jess," Gabriel says.

Sam looks up at him with woebegone eyes.

"Maybe it makes sense, after all," Gabriel concedes. "You'll make better decisions if you've talked to Jess. She's the more sensible part of your hearth, anyway."

"You're pretty sensible yourself," Sam says, and gives Gabriel a tiny smile.

Which is adorable and damnit, Gabriel does not need to be attracted to Sam, no matter how much his blend of masculine alter-form and feminine human-form appeals. Not when he's already proven capable of getting Gabriel pregnant. Stupid decisions made in the flush of heat are one thing, stupid decisions made in the cool are just _stupid_.

"... But I'm not part of your hearth, am I?" Gabriel offers shakily. He really doesn't want Sam to answer that, because he's going to do something stupid if Sam says the wrong (right) thing.

"Aren't you? You're in this as much as I am, as much as Jess. I think that makes us 'hearth-mates', right?"

Damnit. Gabriel can't repress the elation that shoots up his spine at Sam's words, even if Sam has no clue what he's saying – Sam has never has a clue, because he's not just an outlander, but an outlander raised by selkie barbarians, not sensible cats or proud wolves or hyenas, honorable and true.

"Yes," Gabriel finds himself saying, and then he pulls Sam to him with the hand behind his ear, pulls until Sam's almost in his lap and the boy's mouth is sweet when Gabriel kisses him. Sweet and open in surprise and then squeaking adorably and kissing back

Damn adorable boy. Damn, damn, damn!

 

The dairy is a collection of turf buildings, only minimally maintained by the shepherds during winter, so the first thing Jess has to do is help get them fit for living in. It's actually hard work, and even a bit dangerous, but she ties Chaz onto her back and help set turf blocks into the walls, and cut thatch for the roofs, and all manner of things that need doing.

When that's completed, there are the cattle and sheep that the shepherds have brought in. The wethers are left to fend for themselves, more or less, but the cows and ewes have to be milked. Jess isn't terribly good at it, so she gets only three cows to look after – placid, gentle ones with no habits of kicking the milk pail or stepping on feet – and mostly works on cheese-making.

Monitoring the cream as it wass separated, adding rennet for curds, straining off the whey and pressing cheese into wheels that could be aged and smoke took hours, every day. She worked from sun-up until noon, ate, and then worked until she was finished, and ate again.

If she was fortunate, she had time to tutor Claire a little on mathematics, before taking the star observations and retiring for the night. There was no end to the work it seemed, and even with all the children Ellen had around to help – two daughters, a son not even old enough to accompany the men on his first sea voyage, and many children of servants as well as a few favored servants – Jess never seemed to have a moment for herself the first week. She was either busy, or tending Chaz – who was amazingly quiet after the first day – when screaming and wailing hadn't brought Gabriel to rescue him, the toddler had given up and just snuffled into her back most days – or teaching Claire.

The second week, though, she found her rhythm, of more likely Ellen did, because the older woman shifted the work around, so that Jess milked only in the mornings and made cheese, and spent a good part of the afternoon spinning and weaving. Of course, there was a lot of wool from the last clip, and it required nearly as much work of combing, spinning, and weaving, and all that on a loom that was so primitive that Jess hadn't been able to weave on it at first.

What she wouldn't give for Gabriel and his inventive spirit!

Which was why she was overjoyed to hear Claire yell, "Uncle!" five weeks into their summer sojourn. Sam and Gabriel had come visiting.

 

"Tatatatata!" Chaz says, his little legs drumming against Gabriel's sides as he cuddles his son in the courtyard of Ellen's upland dairy. His baby had run to him on fat baby legs, and Gabriel is not letting him down for a second. Chaz's dark hair looks lighter – is it the sun, or is his hair changing as he gets older? Chaz is old enough that his muzzle could be lightening in alter-form, probably, but Gabriel worries at the possibility. Chaz is so small and harmless now, but if his pelt is lightening, it won't be long before he has his spots and tries to intimidate age-mates. And without Gabriel to discipline him, what could Chad turn out to be...

Gabriel has already seen what no good discipline – because selkies might have discipline of a sort, but it is tooth and claw, not value and compromise – has done to Sam. He doesn't want that repeated with Chaz.

 

Sam is happy to see Jess, happy for the time alone together, ever if it means they're sitting against the outside turf house and hoping that no one comes around the edge to disturb them.

"Hmm," Sam hums appreciatively, and reads Jess' logbook on the stars. It's close to his own observations, but he needs to check her math. But he doesn't really want to, not with Jess in his arms.

"I missed you, too," Jess says. "Just so you know."

Sam chuckles. "Glad to hear that."

"Hmmm," Jess tucks her head against his shoulder, her breasts and belly warm against him, and Sam has rarely felt this tender and this lustful at once.

"I missed you," Sam says, and brushes his hands over Jess' purring back.

Jess looks up at him with soft eyes. "What's the matter," she teases, knowing full well how Sam was, throwing his impatience and poor temper back at him.

"I _missed_ you," Sam says, and pulls Jess onto his lap. She's sweet and soft and willing and he missed that so terribly, which is like missing dinner and breakfast and having no food left anyway. He kisses the top of Jess' head and works his way down her neck.

Jess purrs harder at him, and he decides this is fine with him, in the pale, wee hours of the night. He and Jess lie out under the stars, which seem to be Sam's totem anyway – a summer night that watches down on them as they make love outside the dairy.

It's a good happenstance, and Sam feels himself calm afterwards, his stress and anger facing like his orgasm. Which is why he starts babbling again, of course...

 

"I had sex with Gabriel," Sam blurts out.

Jess blinks in confusion, running the words through her head, trying to parse them through her post-coital haze. Then they resolve into the concept of sex – Sam and Gabriel and sex – and she asks, "Why are you telling me this now!?"

Sam grimaces beside her, and shrugs helpless. "Idiocy?"

"That I'll buy," Jess mutters. She props herself up on her elbows and looks down the long length of Sam's body. He looks good on the bed, all sleek, hard muscles and a fairly sweet ass.

"I didn't mean to. I don't even think Gabriel meant to –"

"Not likely," Jess snorts.

"It was just... Adam and Dean came by, wanting more work, and I had to argue with them. And when they left, I wound up arguing with Gabriel..." Sam looks embarrassed, and confused about it.

"And you wound up fucking in the smithy..."

Sam drops his head and mumbles something.

"What was that?" Jess did not hear that right.

"... workbench," Sam mumbles louder.

"You fucked him on the workbench?" Jess asks in surprise. For one thing, Gabriel didn't like a mess in his forge.

"No, I kissed him on ... over, the workbench. And then he shoved me away and went upstairs."

"Tell me you didn't fuck him in our bed."

Sam opens his mouth and closes it with a snap. He winces.

"Sam, you didn't."

"I didn't," Sam agrees, and rubs the back of his neck oddly, almost pinching at the skin as he rubs his fingers over it.

Jess frowns at him, and narrows her eyes, "Sam..."

"He bit me," Sam says sheepishly.

"On the back of your neck?"

Sam flushes red as madder dye.

"Sam!"

"... I liked it..." Sam mumbles.

Jess just stares at him. Neckbiting is something that happens when one is carried away enough to mate in alter-form – which Jess knows some people do, even by preference, but in her city it was always considered embarrassingly primal – or when one is off one's head from the pressures of heat. And it's almost always a male biting a female's neck. Not the other way round.

"Did he..." Jess doesn't even know how to ask if Gabriel fucked Sam.

"We just, you know, rubbed against each other. Gabriel wouldn't let me do ... the other thing," Sam says after a moment. The euphemism is pathetic, but neither of them knows who else might be awake enough to overhear this night, and with the walls as thin as they are in the cottage, Gabriel's secret is not something Sam or Jess want to say.

Jess tries to imagine it. The two of them, rubbing off against each other to orgasm – her mind gives her a vivid image, and then she adjusts it for the idea of Gabriel biting Sam, and she feels herself flush at _that_ thought.

"Hmm," she says, and rolls off her elbows, sitting up in the bed to look down at Sam, who looks up at her in startlement. "Like this...?" Jess asks, as she straddles Sam's back, trapping him.

"Oh, damn, Jess..." Sam groans, and groans louder when Jess leans down to run her tongue up the knob of Sam's nape, scraping with her teeth.

"Yeah," Jess purrs, and wriggles her hips, pressing against Sam's back.

"You're going to kill me..." Sam mutters, and tries to shift around under her. Jess clamps her hand on his neck, pinching the skin with her other hand, even as Sam yelps. He's only made it onto his side, but Jess can feel his penis against her thigh, hot and almost stiff again

"Yeah, maybe," Jess says, slowly sliding herself backwards and to the side, letting Sam slide against her slick vulva, but not releasing her hold on his neck to get his cock into her.

Sam drops his head to the mattress, and whines at her.

Jess laughs, but stops pinching him long enough that he can reach down with a hand and guide him into her. The angle is all wrong, and they can only rock shallowly together, but Jess keeps her hand heavy on the back of Sam's neck and it's one of the best bouts of sex she's ever had.

In the morning, right before Sam and Gabriel leave to go back down to the coast, Jess gets Gabriel alone long enough to laugh in his ear and poke her nose against his nape. He gives a laugh in shock, and when she smiles at him reassuringly, a soft whoop before he presses his nose against her shoulder in return.

It's not a bad end to their visit, all in all. Jess goes back to the work of milking and cheesemaking reassured, and back to the sextant readings with much more confidence.

 

The day they flip the boat and actually drag it to the water is one of the best days of Sam's life.

"We did it!" Sam yells as the boat slips into the water, bobbing up and off the beach with every flow of the tide. He turns to grin at the smith, who is staring at the boat with a sweetly bemused look on his face.

"I'm amazed," Gabriel says, in a quiet, gentle tone that is utterly unlike him.

"It floats!" Sam says, and wades into the surf before his boat bobs away from him entirely.

"Yes, it does. Shouldn't we leash it somehow, so it doesn't float away?"

Sam gives Gabriel a look, and then he understands. "You mean anchor. You _anchor_ a boat."

"Anchor, leash, don't we need to tie it to land so that it doesn't go out to sea without us?"

Sam nods, and pulls the boat back towards shore, or tries to. It's unwieldy to maneuver a boat even this big from the outside by yourself.

"You could help, Gabriel," he says at last, tired of fighting with the boat, which is very obviously seaworthy now, since it hasn't sunk even with his thrashing.

Gabriel frowns, and then shucks off his coat, and his kilt, and wades into the water naked but for a modest apron that really doesn't disguise anything. Not when it's wet, anyway. Sam's wet to his thighs, and his trousers are going to need to be rinsed out at the very least, but with the two of them tugging hard, they manage to beach the boat again.

"I can't believe I forgot an anchor," Sam says afterwards.

Gabriel just gives him a look. They're laying on the sand by the boat, waiting for the wind and sun to dry them off enough that they won't drip when they walk. Gabriel's a lot further along, even though Sam's shucked off his trousers and is only wearing his undershorts. The wind is uncomfortable as they are very wet and the combined effect is rather chilly, but Sam isn't going to give in and strip off entirely. He's not Gabriel, comfortable with being naked on a beach.

Though at least the smith's shamelessness means his clothes are dry. Sam watches contemplatively as Gabriel winds his now dry clothing back on. It's impossible not to notice the play of muscles in the smith's back as he wraps and tucks the apron back on – Sam can't help but admire the square buttocks and the heavily muscled thighs, as well as the span of Gabriel's shoulders.

It's hard to reconcile Gabriel's obvious masculinity with the memory of his heat, and his voracious appetite for Sam's cock in those hot confusing days.

"You're really attractive, you know," Sam babbles.

Gabriel looks up at that, and raises his eyebrows.

"I don't know why you should be," Sam continues, and wishes he could stop himself, because really, "You're not in the least bit soft or squishy or _feminine_ –"

"I am too," Gabriel says.

"Huh?" is Sam's response.

"I'm feminine," Gabriel says. "So are you. It's attractive, at least when you don't _talk_."

"Hey!" Sam yelps, and realizes that Gabriel is winding him up when the other man grins and whoops at him.

 

"Miss Jess, look!" Claire yells as she release the bird in her hand. The plover flaps its broken wing and tries to hop away pathetically.

Chaz shrieks in joy and pounces. His blunt little muzzle – with the pale new hair silvering his nose – snaps down, and the bird goes limp. When Claire tries to take the carcass from him, he makes a grinding growl, like a saw ripping through a log.

"Chaz!" she cries in outrage.

The baby drops the bird to gape his mouth and whoop at his cousin. This causes Claire to transform into her own alter-form and snatch the bird up. She stretches her long legs and trots behind Jess, which causes Chaz to cackle in distraught hysterics and toddle after her.

"Claire!" Jess says, and snatches the dead bird out of Claire's mouth – Claire meeps in protest, but Jess tosses the bird to Chazaiel. "You know better than that, Claire."

"He's supposed to share!" Claire yells.

"You're supposed to know better – stealing food from babies, even if you caught the food, is reprehensible, Claire."

"I won't get a share if I don't! Look, he's eating it all!" Claire whines, pointing.

Jess turns to look, and Chaz is messily trying to disembowel the bird. Or possibly wear it like a hat. "Chaz," she says as she crouches down to take the bird from the toddler. "You can eat neater than this."

Chaz whines and transforms, chubby hands reaching for his stolen treat. "Want bird, Jeszie. _Bird_ ," he says emphatically.

"We're sharing it," Jess says, and pulls the bird apart messily. She hands part to Claire and part to Chaz but keeps the largest part for herself, which she transforms to eat. Chaz is happy to play with the part he received back, but he doesn't seem to be actually hungry. Claire transforms and picks her part clean with her small sharp teeth.

The meat is meager, but good enough that Jess falls into a dazed sleep with Claire and Chaz, just on the sheltered side of the dairy. She only wakes up when Chaz tries nuzzling one of her teats, and bites her when he doesn't find milk.

"Chaz!"

"Want milk!"

"I don't have any for you, Chaz," she sighs, and cuts off his incipient wailing by transforming and picking him up. He transforms out of alter-form, but he's still grumpy and hungry, and he's bitten her hard enough that the mark is probably going to last days.

"Just like a man," Ellen laughs when Jess comes into the dairy with Chaz on her hip, still demanding milk in a grumbling voice.

The wolf woman finds a wooden mug for Chaz and retrieves some of the milk, so fresh from the cow that it's steaming. Ellen sits down and motions Chaz over. The baby looks deeply suspicious of Ellen, but the lure of fresh milk is too much for him. He sits down in Ellen's lap and guzzles.

"A little wild one you've got here," Ellen laughs as Chaz tries to drink, pout adorably, and look at Ellen suspiciously.

"I don't own him," Jess says, "I wouldn't if I could – he bit me!"

"Teething pains, little man?" Ellen asks, and rubs a thumb on the baby's mouth, testing his gums for more teeth erupting.

Jess watches with relief as Ellen soothes the baby and gets him to drink his fill. After that, his eyes start dropping and he transforms into his alter-form, black body still roly-poly and ugly enough to be cute, but now with lighter hairs on his nose. He buries that appendage in the bare spike of his tail, and falls right asleep.

"You're a miracle worker, Ellen," Jess says.

"He's not such a bad mite, just a handful when he's hungry. You'll get used to it."

"I'll never get used to it. I can't see how Gabriel manages."

Ellen gives her a long look, "You'd best figure out how he does it, cougar girl, because you're going to need those skill soon yourself."

Jess does a double-take from where she was scooping up Chaz.

"What?"

"You heard me."

"I did. But I don't understand what you mean."

"Girl," Ellen says, giving her that hard measuring stair, "You smell of cub, and not the one in your arms. You settled – not all that surprising, what with you being a cat and having missed catching during your heat. You were wide open when Sam came visiting, weren't you?"

Jess thinks about how happy she was for Sam to visit, and how nice it was to have him in her bed for those days. But if she went into heat and didn't notice, if it was completed before she even noticed she was in season, she's never going to trust her observational skills again.

She's... pregnant? At this time of all times?

Well, crap. This is going to move up their timetable rather a lot. Crap.

 

Sam is working on the boat – it's hauled up on the beach again as he and Gabriel lay planking and try to construct a better system for steering and rigging. The smith has been using some of their precious copper to forge brightwork – metal teeth and tiedown that won't rust in the salt.

It's interesting trying to make the new lines and yards work with the sheet of sail Sam has, if only because Sam isn't light enough to shimmy up a mast anymore, and Gabriel is afraid of heights to go with his sea-sickness. It's damned inconvenient when someone has to go up to unfoul a line, and Sam can't because he'd snap the entire rig.

Bobby comes by, and looks at Sam as if he's crazy, since he's demasted the boat again, and Gabriel is lying on his stomach at the stern, auguring out holes to put the rudder mechanism into.

"Ellen's home, boy. You should go find your woman," is all the gruff old shipwright says.

Sam perks up, and is jumping four-footed to the sand before he quite knows what he's doing. Gabriel stares at him as he bounces and leaps, waiting for the smith to follow. Finally, he resorts to barking.

"I'm coming," Gabriel says, and slithers carefully off the boat, after stowing his tools precisely in his case. He slings his satchel over his shoulder, and begins walking up the beach, towards the village.

Sam howls and stamps his feet, and runs in circles, he's so excited at the thought of seeing Jess again. But Gabriel can't transform in public, so he's stuck waiting on the smith's two-legged pace, and it's just infuriating.

"You could go on ahead," Gabriel says, but Sam just huffs at him. Gabriel is so _impractical_ sometimes, and while yes, Sam could go on ahead, he doesn't _want_ to. He wants Gabriel with him.

The smith shrugs. "Don't say I didn't offer."

So Sam takes much longer than he would have liked to get to Bobby and Ellen's house, long enough that Jess sees him coming and comes out to meet him, her long tail swinging as she transform along the way. Sam is nearly bowled over by her soft, heavy paw coming down on his shoulder, and her headbutt that pushes his nose into the air as she rubs her cheeks all over his head.

"Sam..." she says, in a tone of complete satisfaction.

Sam can feel his own tail thumping back and forth in joy. "Jess, missed you."

There is a shriek, and Gabriel steps past them both to sweep Chazaiel's stubby-legged little body in the air, whooping along with his son and his niece, who jumps on him with her spindly alter-form, knocking the smith off his feet even as he cackles and whoops with happiness.

Jess giggles at that, and shoulder-checks Sam as he rolls his eyes.

"They're happy. Let them be happy, Sam," Jess says.

"Of course I will," Sam says.

"Are you happy?" Jess ask.

"Why wouldn't I be?" Sam laughs, and buries his nose in Jess' tawny fur, inhaling deeply. Then he stiffens in shock, "Jess?!"

"... that," Jess says, and her whole body drops as she crouches timidly in front of him.

Sam sniffs her, intently and all over – head, back, belly, and tail – and steps back in surprise. "You weren't in heat!"

Jess looks a little embarrassed, "Sometimes you catch anyway..."

"Oh." Sam says. "Oh! Well, okay then. A baby. Huh." But his grin keeps flickering away because how are they going to get off the island with Jess pregnant – they're still a month away from the plan being ready, and Jess will only get bigger and more waddling as time goes on.

 

Gabriel is holding Chazaiel out on the ledge, his nose in the toddler's hair as his son sleeps in his arms. His baby smells different – like grass, not salt and stone – from the months in the uplands. And he's heavier, taller, his little legs less chubby from whatever he did at the dairy – practiced stalking sheep with Claire's guidance, according to his niece.

He's trying to imagine Chaz stalking anything successfully, even his rag doll, but it's not coming. His baby is still too roly-poly, too clumsy. Claire at this age still tripped over her feet most of the time, especially in alter-form, and her parent Amelia would bring back small game already dead, voles and hamsters, for her to savage.

"Hey," Jess says as she slides beside Gabriel on the ledge.

"Done with the observations?" Gabriel asks.

"Claire's helping Sam. I think he needed to bury himself in something."

Gabriel gives her a sideways look. "Well, you might as well have struck him with lightning with your announcement..."

Jess's face falls, she looks out into the summer's late twilight. "It's not like I meant for this to happen..."

"No, I know that," Gabriel reassures her. "The timing is bad, though."

Jess gives him a long look, and then shakes her head. "I know. I really do."

"You want me to brew you pennyroyal and cohosh?"

"...No." Jess looks down at her feet, and then straight at Gabriel. "No. I... this won't ruin my life, Gabriel. I'll survive."

"Cats usually do," Gabriel concedes.

Jess gives him a long look. "... Your kind don't...?"

Gabriel pulls Chaz close, and buries his nose in his baby's hair, in the sweet scent of his own. "We're not cats."

"Gabriel..."

"How bad is it?" Sam's voice asks from the doorway, causing both Gabriel and Jess to turn. The tall wolf-skin stands against the lintel, looking tired and utterly sad.

"What do you mean, Sam?" Gabriel asks. He's fairly sure what Sam wants to know, but he's so used to not saying things, he wants Sam to ask specifically.

"How often does your kind die in childbirth?" Sam asks bluntly.

"One in thirty-three, at least the first time. Afterwards, it's not so dangerous," Gabriel says.

"One in _thirty-three_?!" Jess gasps beside him.

Gabriel shrugs. It's hard work pushing a baby out through your genitalia, and there's a lot that can go wrong. Transforming to alter-form doesn't help, because you're still a hyena and you still have the same ridiculously elongated birth canal.

Sam has an inward look on his face, like he's calculating the numbers. "How do you keep your population up with those kind of losses? Who takes care of the orphans?"

"What orphans?" Gabriel asks in confusion. If a parent dies in the first birth, there will be no orphans, and it's so very rare, one in two hundred or less, for a parent to die in the second birth.

"Well, if the mother–"

"Parent," Gabriel corrects.

"–dies, then what about the baby?"

"What baby?" Gabriel stares at Sam, baffled.

"The baby doesn't survive, right?" Jess says, and her hand touches Gabriel's.

"Not in a first pregnancy, no," Gabriel confirms.

"You said that, before," Jess says, in a voice that is soft, far softer than is warranted.

"But Chaz..." Sam says.

"He's from my second time." Gabriel smiles down at his son. He'd been happy to have Mehaleel passing through at the right time, right when he was ramping up for a heat – the other man had been a lucky-birth, and rather adept at sex. His sweet voice and his elegant tapered hands had been very attractive, and he'd had a lovely oval face, as well. Chaz seems to have gotten that oval face, instead of Gabriel's own pointed chin and too sharp nose.

"Was it easier, the second time?" Jess asks.

Gabriel whoops softly in amusement. "Yes, of course." It was much easier, to know he was carrying life and not death, even if his brothers were far away and he'd been almost entirely alone but for his ten-year old niece. What a mess _that_ had been, though Claire had been an admirably wise child about the whole thing.. "And more hopeful, of course."

"I hope..." Jess says, but chokes, her hands clutching into fists. "I..."

Sam strides towards her, crouching down and pressing his hands around her fists. "It'll be all right, Jess. I promise. We'll get away. We'll get away, and our cub will be free. I promise."

Gabriel hopes that Sam is right. Jess must be more than a month along already, and they only have a limited amount of time before winter, before they can't safely put out to sea, or even riskily. There's only a short window where they can run and have the whale road close behind them.

 

Reconciling the star observations against each other – Sam's from the coast, Jess's from the highland, _and_ the island against Oxencross Town – is hard, nervous work.

Jess worries over each discrepancy, each little variation in her records from Sam's. Sam had the frame sextant, huge and fixed on the roof. He should have gotten the better readings, but Jess had the portable sextant. They are going to _use_ the portable sextant when they're on the water.

She needs to figure out any variances it might have, so she can calculate her margins. It's comparison and confidence and the difference between precision and accuracy, and it's nerve-wracking.

And the baby making her queasy at random times is no help at all. Jess occasionally resents her growing child, because all she seems to be now is tired and without appetite – for food, for conversation, for sex – for anything other than sleep, she has little impetus.

Gabriel does good work, she had to admit, as she works through the numbers and confirms that Gabriel's sextant reads consistently across the months – he's precise. Whether he's accurate – whether _they_ are accurate, trying make the dream of celestial navigation a reality, is another question.

"I'm done in," Jess says finally. She puts down her stylus and her wax tablet, and stops. She can't concentrate, the numbers are beginning to run together under her fingers, let alone her mind.

"Jess?" Sam says, looking up from across the table. He'd been running his own numbers o their observations. If they could both come to the same results in calculation, they had a much better chance to succeed than if they disagreed badly.  
"I can't keep anything straight anymore," Jess says, throwing up her hands and shoving away from the table. She's exhausted, and she wants to curl up in her bed, so she heads away through their home.

Gabriel and the kids are sleeping out on the playroom's balcony, and Jess pauses at the room's door to smile fondly at the sight of the smith lying on his side on a thin tick mattress with his son and niece lying on his alter-form.

A moment later, Jess is queasy, and she throws herself onto her bed with a groan. Changing to alter-form helps only a little, because curling herself nose under tail is a kitten's silly actions, but it relieves pressure somewhere.

Sam pads into the room sometime later, though Jess is panting against the nausea and has no idea how long it's been. His alter-form looks wickedly alien tonight, with its ruff of coarse fur and short triangular ears.

She hisses when he tries to curl up next to her – she doesn't want him now, and he's just not helping, so she closes her eyes, flattens her ears, and tries to sleep.

To her surprise, she must have slept, because she wakes to the soft murmur of human voices.

"Is this even normal..."

"...water, Sam, I need..."

Jess growls softly, and raises her head. In the dim moonlight, Gabriel is crouched beside the bed, looking up at Sam – back in human-skin - and they're arguing. Maybe. Or maybe they're kissing, the way Sam is bent low. It's hard to tell, what with her being sleepy.

"Huh..." she says, very eloquently, which startles both Sam and Gabriel into staring at her.

"Jess..." Sam says, and yes, that's guilt. Or at least Sam's situational embarrassment. Gabriel just looks at her, and then run a hand between her ears.

"Well, you aren't feeling well, are you?" Gabriel says, and very practically fills the basin from the water ewer, giving her the opportunity to lap away her sudden thirst.

"Can you transform?" Sam asks, which makes Jess put back her ears. Sam flinches away.

Gabriel gives her a long look, and stands up. He shoves one of the chests to the door, and then comes back, transforming as he does so. He's so _massive_ like this – it's as if someone had taken his blacksmith's musculature and just squashed it into the smallest cube it would fit into.

"Sam..." Gabriel says, shoving Sam aside as he jumps into the bed. Sam transforms as well, surprisingly nervous with his tail wagging conciliatorily.

"This might help," Gabriel says, and plants a hard pad of a foot on her hip as his tongue pulls over her neck and down her shoulders.

Jess meeps in surprise, and then starts to purr softly when Sam joins in. It's so very kittenish to let someone groom her, but Gabriel seems to know what he's doing and Sam is diligent if not skilled.

"How did you know to do that?" Jess asks when they're finished, and she's lying sprawled with her head on Sam's hip.

Gabriel yawns enormously, showing off huge fangs and truly intimidating molars – not just his carnassials, which are wickedly sharp, but wide hind teeth like nutcrackers. No wonder he can eat bone, if that's what his teeth look like. "My brothers' hearthmate, Amelia. She was sore all the time too when she was pregnant with Claire. Sometimes grooming helped."

"She's a cat like Claire, then?" Sam asks, his leg rising and falling under Jess' chin as he asks the question.

Gabriel makes an amused grumble. "A cheetah, yes. So are James and Castiel, my share-brothers – my parent's other children," he explains.

Jess blinks slowly, trying to understand that, but she's too tired.

Sam asks, though. "But you're a hyena."

"As was my parent, and at least one of his bedmates when he conceived me," Gabriel says. "James and Castiel, there was a cheetah he liked – Joachim, I think his name was. Long and skinny – you know the type."

"Not really..." Sam says.

"I do," Jess says. She grew up in a city that was mostly cats, cougars and lynxes and the small cats of the forest – a few cheetahs too, all speed and nerves, and a family of leopards she remembers well. She'd gone to school with the youngest leopard, and been jealous of her classmate's black rosettes when her baby spots faded away. "Long and skinny and fast. The boys like to chase you."

Gabriel whoops a little in amusement. "I suppose. I never noticed, but long and skinny was never my taste. Too much like my parent's other sons, I suppose."

"I like stronger stuff," Jess says, and rubs her cheek against Sam's hip.

Sam's ears twitch, up and down and up again, and he says, "... Thanks," so dryly that Jess giggles.

"Oh, don't worry, Sam, I do like you. You're just what I want."

"Just not now," Sam says, pouting.

"Give it a rest, Sam. She's pregnant, and the first months are terrible. Four months in, she'll probably get her second wind and then you'll be happy you had a rest beforehand. And still your hips might wear out."

Jess lifts her head off Sam's hip in surprise, and gives Gabriel a look. "Is that experience talking, Gabriel?"

Gabriel whoops, and just grins at her, showing his teeth.

Sam looks faintly nauseous himself, which just means Jess keeps laughing. It's good to laugh, and when Gabriel gets up to bump noses with her and rearrange himself to curl against her – putting his head, heavy bony thing that it is on Sam's foreleg – Sam just sighs and flops down.

They spend the night like that, one curled up against the other.

 

"Maybe we should wait until next year," Sam says days later, when they're trying to work out how much more they need to get a pregnant Jess through a late autumn sea voyage safely.

"So we'd have a toddler _and_ an infant to care for?" Gabriel asks.

"No, Sam," Jess agrees with the smith. "We go this year. Now, not later."

Sam looks at both of them, with their faces drawn grim and set. He'd really rather have Jess safe, even if it means safe on the island, while she's pregnant.

"You don't want to be pregnant at sea; you'll be awfully sick–"

"– so there will be two of us, instead of one," Gabriel snaps.

Sam rounds on him, "I can't sail the boat myself! It's too big, even with the improvements!"

"I can help!" comes from the doorway.

They all turn, and stare at Claire.

"Little brother-kin–" Gabriel begins, his tone so deliberately patient that Claire hisses.

"I can! Ben's shown me how to do knots and sails before. I could help Sam! It's only a fishing boat! I know I could!"

Sam grimaces, and wants to tell Claire to go back to the playroom, but Jess intervenes.

"It's not just simple sailing, Claire. You'd have to practice with Sam and do exactly what he tells you."

"I could do that!"

"And not gossip about it," Gabriel says, "Sam's been working on the boat all summer – it's his mastery piece, so it has to be secret until it's tested."

"I won't, Uncle!" Claire says.

"All right, then, if Sam agrees."

Claire looks at Sam with big hopeful eyes.

"Okay. If you promise to obey my instructions. And not talk about the boat to your friends–"

"Ben," Claire interrupts, "he's the only one who talks to me about boats. The girls just want to talk about _weaving_ and sheep."

"– then you can crew for me when I test it out."

"Thank you, Master Sam."

"Claire. You've gotten your way," Gabriel tells her. "Now, bed."

Claire darts forward, and kisses Sam's cheek, before she peeps in excitement and runs back to the playroom.

Gabriel rolls his eyes and pinches his nose.

"Well, at least if she gossips," Jess says, "she'll only brag about the new sails, and not about what we're planning to do with the boat itself?"

"Not helping, Jess," Sam moans, "not helping."

 

Gabriel finds sneaking supplies – especially the horrible dried biscuits – down to the boat somewhere between a challenge and a terror. He's got to make it look simple, unremarkable, like they're only stocking the boat for the short test trips that Sam tells Bobby and Dean he's going to make before the autumn ends.

It's Jess who tells Sam to stock it as if they were on going on a short-haul trip between islands, finally.

"Down to the Western Isles and back – that's not too remarkable for a late season trip, is it?"

Sam smiles, and kisses Jess before he agrees that it's not.

So Gabriel is doing the heavy lifting of rolling barrels of preserved sheep heads and dried cod onto the beach. Sam's doing the actual stowing, lifting the supplies onto the boat and directing Jess and Claire where to tie things down. It's not so bad, though Chaz grumbles from inside Gabriel's coat every time Gabriel has to start another barrel rolling or haul another skin bag of meat or dairy out of the handcart.

His baby is getting too big to be carried pick-a-back, but Gabriel finds Chaz's weight and grumbly burbling to be reassuring.

Until Sam's brothers come by, and then Gabriel just wants to hide.

"You sure this thing will stay afloat," Dean says, as he looks at the boat Sam and Gabriel have spent every spare summer moment improving. "What did you do to the sails, Sammy?"

Sam motions Gabriel and the others back behind him, and peers over the gunwale to talk to his brother. "It's an experiment in rigging, Dean. I did spend all that time in Oxencross Town actually studying."

"They let you study shipbuilding?" Dean asks, his face askance.

"Mathematics. The shipbuilding is an application... I hope."

Dean chuckles at that, and cuffs Sam on the head, then turns to the other brother beside him and says, "See, Adam, he knows what he's doing. He's building a boat."

Adam, one of Sam's hearth-brothers, not his share-brother – there's no love lost between Adam's parent Kate, and the children of her husband – rolls his eyes. "I just said that it was way too much work. But I changed my mind. It looks... useful. You need any extra crew on your shakedown, Sam?"

Sam's back stiffens, and Gabriel hopes he keeps his calm, because his other option is to disembowel two selkies if they figure out the plan because of Sam.

"Nah. Part of the idea is to see how the boat handles with only a small crew."

 

Jess breathes a sigh of relief when Dean and Adam walk away. Adam is Jo's young man, and he's not all that bad, but he's cleverer in some ways than Dean, more curious and compelled to investigate. It would be hard to start their endeavor with Adam hanging around to see how it goes.

They go home to the forge that night in a terror of tremble, and Jess only wants to be a cat and cuddle. Sam lets her, and they exchange licking in their big bed for a while, until there is a tap at the door.

Sam gets up to open it, and Gabriel nudges a sleepy eyed Claire in, and carries in Chaz, who is asleep in alter-form. Sam must realize Gabriel's intentions, because he shoves the chest of drawers in front of the bedroom door.

"I couldn't sleep for worry," Gabriel says, and lays Chaz's bonelessly sleeping form against Jess' flank.

"It's all right," Jess says once Gabriel's transformed, "Come sleep beside me." The smith transforms easily and lays behind Jess, friendly and intimate with his huge splotched form curling behind her legs

Claire yawns huge and transforms, still yawning. She rolls on to her back, and wriggles, leaving coarse hair everywhere, before she curls up tight and neat with her nose under Gabriel's muzzle.

"Sam," Jess says, knowing he can't understand in human shape but she speaks anyway. It prompts him to change back, his alter-form a beautiful dark grey, almost black, thick-coated against the coming winter and large enough.

"Busy day, tomorrow," Sam babbles.

"I know," Jess says.

"We're going to do this, finally," Sam continues.

Jess drops her ears, and leans back to look at Gabriel in concern. The smith looks up from where he was grooming sleeping Chazaiel, and rolls his eyes again.

"Seriously, you're like my little brothers before they learn to walk. Always needy," Gabriel grumbles, but he gets up and picks his way across the bed to cross until he's behind Sam.

Jess gasps in shock when Gabriel puts his foot down so high on Sam's shoulder, on his neck almost, and begins to groom Sam like a recalcitrant kitten. Sam looks grumpy for a moment, and then his eyes narrow in bliss, and he starts making soft pleasant grunts.

To Jess' eyes, she sees either a concerned act of caring for family, or else Gabriel asserting dominance in a really odd way. Gabriel notices her watching, and pokes his snout in her face.

"Go. to. sleep. Jess," Gabriel says with gentle amusement. "Tomorrow will come like any other day."

Jess surprises herself by yawning after Gabriel leans forward and licks her, She's so sleepy-eyed that she can't keep her eyes open, so she curls up with her adopted kittens and closes her eyes to the sight of Gabriel and Sam, grooming and groomed.

 

Sam has them all down at the boat the next morning. It's the last minute things that he's worried about – a missing rope for a sail, a clamp that can't be repaired, spillage, wastage, one of Dean's followers, or Dean himself suddenly there to invite himself along, it could be anything.

What it is, though, turns out to be his father.

John and Dean have finally finished the inventory of this summer's voyages, and thus John has time to spare for his second son.

Sam manages not to piss himself, or vomit, when he hears his father calling from outside the boat. He's not a child anymore, to freeze in fear and submission—not that ever worked on John,

"Hello, sir," he says as his father barks at the boat. Other heads pop up in the water—of course they're swimming, even though the boat is far enough into the shallows that they could wade. No selkie will walk where they can swim, and as far as John is concerned, the entire sea is his to traverse.

"Sam," John says, after Sam's tossed out a rope to his father. The older male changes forms and helped climbs up.

He looks about him with an air of inspection, as if Sam couldn't possibly have checked every yard and line of his own boat. His nostrils flair at Gabriel, who along with Claire, is cutting dried stockfish into bits of bait under the shelter of the cabin canopy. The smith stops what he's doing, puts knife down and hands up, and moves back enough for John to step closer and snort at him. Jess is handling the rudder, keeping it steady as John steps around the boat and Sam trails after him, nervous.

"You really think this tangle of line will work?" John finally asks.

"Yes," Sam says, "I do." It's hard, not to grow back at John, not to simply lunge and challenge. But his father is solid, and his alter form outweighs Sam's by a ridiculous degree. For all that Sam wants to challenge John for coming onto his own deck as if Sam's still a boy, it wouldn't be a fair fight—not once John slid them into the water, and John would, even though he'd have to capsize the boat to do it.

"Well," John says, "I'm willing to let you fall or succeed. But if you get in trouble, what with going out on the sea now, after summer is over, I'm not letting Dean come to your rescue."

"I don't expect you to," Sam agrees. It's no less than other warnings he's had from his father, about Sam's foolishness. "The boat _is_ sound," he says. He made sure of it, him and Gabriel.

John snorts again. "Bobby thinks you probably won't kill yourself with this mess," he says, looking at the ropes and pulleys that make up the control rigging for the sails. "He seems to think you have an idea of what you're doing."

"I can build a boat, sir," Sam barely refrains from growling.

"You can sink a boat and drown, too," John says.

"Just let me try this," Sam says again, "It will work."

John snorts again, and shakes his head. "Too damned stubborn, Sam, always wanting to be on a deck, even though you're no good at it. You're too like your mother."

Sam chokes at John's words, his throat going cold and his stomach leaden. It's never good when his father talks about his mother – never.

John apparently doesn't care to talk more to his disappointing, non-selkie son today, because he goes to the rim of the boat, and says, "Just don't get yourself killed," before he drops over the side, transforming before he hits the water.

"I won't," Sam says as he watches his father's sleek black form speed away under the waves.

"Sam..." Jess says at last, her eyes turned out to where his father disappeared from sight.

"I know, Jess," Sam says, and he steps across the deck, carefully dodging around Gabriel and Claire, cutting bait to give the appearance to any observers that Sam really _is_ testing his boat as a fishing vessel.

Jess gulps, and straightens her back, making the bulge of her pregnancy stand out against the generalized thickening of her body. "Where shall I steer the ship, Sam?"

Sam smiles at her. "How about away? To the west, and ten degrees south from true?"

"Towards Malabri Spit?" Jess names the first island nearest the mainland from Walrus Tongue, the first free trade port outside of the selkie island chain.

"Towards Malabri," Sam says, "and eventually... the Giant's Shoulders?"

"Eventually, Hensa, and the Free Cities," Gabriel rumbles from his post of deceptive activity.

"... towards home?" Claire breathes, in her soft voice.

"Yeah, that sounds good," Sam smiles.

 

"How are you doing?" Jess asks.

Gabriel grins weakly and gulps the air, breathing in the ocean's fog. It's cooler up in the front of the boat. Gabriel had hoped that the cool damp air would cut through his nausea, but he's only more alert than before and just as queasy.

"I've been better," he says softly. He doesn't want Sam to hear, because while they brought as much fresh water as possible on board in wooden casks and skin bags, if Gabriel can't reliably keep food down because of his sea-sickness, it will surely cut into their chances of success.

"You are better," Jess says, and settles down beside him, hip against hip and shoulder against shoulder. "Is it as bad this time?"

"As coming to the island?" Gabriel asks. At Jess' nod, he snorts, "At least I'm not trussed like a roast fowl, this time. I remember being scared I was going to vomit up into my nose and choke myself on that hell-ship."

"I'll make sure you can cough cleanly," Jess says, her voice a little sly, even though her head is turned to watch Sam and Claire working the sails. "She's doing well at this..."

"She likes the sea," Gabriel says. He knows his tone is slightly accusatory, like Jess has said something wrong about his niece.

"Gabriel," Jess growls, just a tiny bit, when she turns to look at him.

Gabriel ducks his head, running fingers through his hair. He feels tacky, like he's covered in salt from the sea air.

"Sorry, Jess."

"You're being an idiot," Jess says.

Gabriel can only nod and agree. It's been a handful of days, and they're still among the fishing grounds of the Western Rocks. They could still easily encounter a fleet of selkie ships coming home to the island, or late season fishing vessel, just like what they claimed to be. Off the island was only the first part of the plan; off the sea lanes while they found a new path over the trackless sea – that part required some good bit of luck.

"How are you?" Gabriel finally asks, after they sit in the wind for long minutes. The cool air has finally calmed his queasy stomach, or at least soothed it into making less trouble than it had been.

"Uncomfortable and swollen. My mother told me pregnancy was bad, but I had no idea," Jess moans.

Gabriel looks askance at Jess. She's not halfway through her pregnancy but she's swollen up enormously – as if she's carrying twins, or maybe even a true litter, given how she's rounded out.

"If you were one of my brothers, I'd say you were carrying triplets, and not easily," Gabriel admits.

Jess looks alarmed as the idea. "Triplets?"

"Does your kind never have more than one cub? More than two?" Gabriel asks. He's sure that it happens at least occasionally in other Kinds, but maybe not for Jess' type of cat. She's one of the huge ones, nearer his old companion Kali's size than the commoner small cats of forest and plain.

"Well, sometimes..." Jess admits, "... but me? This time? Are you sure?"

Gabriel shakes his head. "No. Not at all. You're just... I wouldn't show that much, unless I was carrying triplets."

Jess puts a hand to her rounded belly. "I'm only four months – five at the most, Gabriel."

Gabriel wrinkles his nose. Jess is heavy and rounded now. Any bigger, and she'll be waddling.

"I'm going to get big enough to lose sight of my feet," Jess says.

Gabriel looks down at his own toes, and remembers how he couldn't easily bend to reach them when he was carrying Chazaiel. The time before, his first time, he couldn't bend at all without getting help back up, but there had been twins fighting for space inside him, and he'd gotten tight as a drum and very uncomfortable by the end.

Speaking of Chaz, he can hear his son's bright laughter across the deck. He looks, and sees Chaz sitting right at the edge of the canopy that separates the cabin (such as it is) and the deck. Sam is leaning towards the toddler, speaking in soft tones. Sam is surprisingly good with small children, or at least with a small child as bright as Chazaiel. Maybe Sam has a future in being a raiser, if they do manage to make good their escape.

"You have Sam," Gabriel says to Jess, "to help you find them again."

"Do I have you too, Gabriel?" Jess asks.

Gabriel turns to look at her. She looks serious, cool, and tired.

"If you want me, I'll be yours," he surprises himself by saying.

 

 

Sam calculates with a fine eye – azimuth and declension mean _this_ course is a hair different in angle from that one, but league different in where (or if) they land on the coast. It's a straight shot to the mainland, if he and Jess have accurate readings, if Gabriel's sextants are accurate and precise to one another, if the charts aren't half lie and half recollection. If if if...

The water is lasting, though Sam and Gabriel and Claire are on short rations – Jess is too, but not nearly as short, not with her belly rounding out in pregnancy. Chazaiel gets the water he needs, but the toddler doesn't drink much, not curled in his big-eared alter-form, tucked up against Gabriel. The two hyenas have huddled in the lean-to ever since they cast off, tucked in and quiet and chuckling miserably.

Sam looks at the endless ocean, and hopes this plan of his actually works. He's done the best he could, but the fact is that they're limited by the amount of water they can carry, and Dean isn't, if he's following them. If he's realized that Sam's 'short trip' is neither a late fishing expedition or an attempt to shake out the boat before dragging it up onto the beach for another winter.

"What's that?" Claire asks from the bow, pointing.

Sam ducks through the web of ropes – it makes handling the boat with such a small crew possible, but it's hard for him to walk his own deck – and slithers up to where the girl looks over the water.

Sam looks off in the distance, and sees... clouds, looking greenish, reflecting shallow water around an island.

"An island... Malabri Spit, it should be."

Claire perks up, going from downtrodden and bedraggled to perky and bright-eyed in an instant.

"Uncle!" she yells, then changes to her alter-form, all legs and narrow chested speed as she clatters sternwards to where Gabriel is still moldering, unhappily grumblingly out the days of the water. "Uncle, there's land. Sam says there's land!"

Jess comes from the side of the boat, where she's been watching for fish with an obsessive boredom that Sam knows too well. It's too easy to become distracted by the nothing that sometimes happens on a ship under sail.

At least the rudder is fixed, with the ingenious control Gabriel devised and added that last week. Sam is amazed that they got away with modifying the boat so, that the worst they got was scoffing and the most interest they got was Bobby's cautios suspicion that it might work to control a rudder.

Sam's brought them far since they left Walrus Tongue Island, if that is Malabri Spit in front of them. He can't imagine it's anything else, unless he and Jess have utterly miscalculated everything, Spit-town is their first stop – water and maybe hardtack if they're lucky, before they cut east and head into the Middle Sea.

He wonders what it'll be like, going between the rocks of the Giant's Shoulders, and down into the Middle Sea and the old Northern cities. Gabriel insists that once they get inside the Shoulders, that they'll be able to go to Oessa, or Malnich, or any one of the great university cities Sam has only heard about, read about in books carried precariously south and in traveler's tales. They'll be able to go to Hensa – there is a library of ten _thousand_ books in Hensa, and an observatory where they use focusing glasses, not sextants, to track the stars, and manufactories where the wonders of the ages are churned out like butter.

Sam wants to see those books, that observatory, those wonders. It's the life that he left home for, the life he lost when Dean dragged him back to his father's world and his father's concerns.

But it's the life he's reached out for, him and Jess and Gabriel, and it is within their grasp.

"Hey," Jess says, and she bumps his shoulder.

"Hey," Sam replies, and wraps his arm around her, shoulder and waist and swelling belly. He has a future again, him, and Jess and the baby they've created between the two of them.

"Sam!" Claire yells from the stern, "Don't we need to tack?"

Sam looks at Jess, and rolls his eyes. He ducks back to the rudder at the stern, and takes it from Claire's nervous hands, steering them gently, smoothly, closer to the land, to the future, and all the while Jess stands at the bow like a beacon.

 

 

CODA

Gabriel is working on another logarithmic ruler when he hears Gilon barking from the front of the shop. Barakiel raises his head from his basket and makes an inquisitive grumble, responding to his twin.

"You stay there," Gabriel tells his son, and goes to see who has come to the shop now, and agitated Sam's son so.

There's a young woman, just a touch younger than Sam, standing smiling in the shopfront. She looks delighted at Gilon, who is trying to climb out of Sam's arm to meet this new person. It's not working well, because Gilon is still in alter-form, and flippers don't grip, no matter how their owner flaps them around.

"He's adorable!" the woman says.

"Well, he tries," Sam says, and kisses the pup's dark head. Gabriel concedes that Gilon does try, but he prefers it when Gilon is in his human-skin; Gabriel isn't unsettled by the toddler then.

"Are you all seals, then? Is that why you have so many sea-charts?" the woman asks. Gabriel winces, but he's off to the side so she doesn't see him. She does see Sam, and the way he hesitates.

"My father was a selkie," Sam says and sets Gilon back on the ground, "Change, Gilika. But no, I have sea-charts because I'm a cartographer, among other things."

The woman looks taken aback, and glances to Gabriel, as if he were a reassuring presence. Gabriel just looks back at her, trying for even and open; this woman did not know what a tender scar she touched, and he shouldn't take it out on her, though he wishes.

"Ah... I knew you were a cartographer and a surveyor. That's why I came," the woman says, "I'm looking for maps of the High Raven Pass, if you have them."

"On the Old Imperial Road by Marscia?" Sam asks, already turning to the shelf with maps.

"Yes," the woman says.

Gabriel ambles over, and says, "We have some maps, but the area is held by wolf packs, and poorly documented."

The woman gives him another sideways look, like she's not quite sure what to make of Gabriel. Especially given the way that Gilon clings to Sam's leg.

"I've wolf kindred," the woman says. "That's not the problem."

Sam blinks at her, and smiles, "Well, can you tell me what is? I can sell you maps, but it doesn't sound like that's what you need..."

"No, I do need a map!" she says and then sighs, "I need a map of the boundary stones."

"Territorial dispute?" Gabriel asks, finally seeing a possible shape to the woman's requests.

She looks at Gabriel, still confused by him. He would snort, because she's in a city full of hyenas – if she's not used to a certain amount of ambiguity now, than she might just be hopeless. "Yes," she says.

"Hmm, the Old Imperial Road is registered to the Revenue Office," Gabriel explains as Sam pulls out another map, this one showing land claims of old, "but wolf-pack territories are internal to the region – they're not listed in the registry, so our maps aren't accurate there."

"Damn," the woman says.

"We could go to the local office and take the tax records for a new map," Sam says, looking to Gabriel for confirmation.

"On commission, of course," Gabriel tells the woman. He's not letting Sam tramp off to the far ends of the world on a speculation instead of a commission – that's no way to earn a living. Even if it would make Gabriel's next heat a lot easier to have Sam off on a research trip for it.

"Sarah, girl! Finally," comes from the doorway, where an older woman is standing now. "What are you up to?"

"Mother, I'm–" their prospective client, Sarah, starts, but she's cut off.

Gilon has changed back to alter-form, and is barking and bouncing on his flippers, excited at this new person.

"Selkie..." the woman in the doorway gasps, pulling back in revulsion at the toddler.

Gabriel narrows his eyes at her. Gilon is many things, including incredibly loud and convinced that the world is his friend, but _selkie_ he is not. He's a sea lion, not a seal– he can walk on land, albeit awkwardly, instead of oozing along like a slug.

"Mother..." Sarah says in reproof.

But it's Sam who gasps and makes Gabriel's heart contract, as he whispers, "Mama?"

The woman in the doorway stares at Sam, and then down at Gilon, who is spinning his ears hopefully and all but wiggling in excitement at a new person.

"...Sam?" Mary asks.

**Author's Note:**

> Spotted hyenas actually are that hard to tell male from female, to the point where they were thought to be hermaphroditic for centuries.
> 
> Beta by owleyes_arisen, greenygal, and chaosraven


End file.
